Author: Bedriaga, Jacques de
Title: Wissenschaftliche Resultate der von N.M. Przewalski nach Central-Asien unternommenen Reisen Zoologischer Teil. Band III, Abtheilung 1: Amphibien und Reptilien. Lieferung 1 to 4, complete in four parts
Description: Saint Petersburg: Buchdruckerei der Kaiserlichen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1898-1912. First edition. Pp. I (blank), II (German title page), III (Russian title page), IV (authorization page), V-VI (contents) + Pp. 1-769 pages + plates I-X (10 uncolored lithographic plates), one photographic text figure. Each plate has an unpaginated page or pages of plate explanations. The book is in parallel Russian and German texts. The manuscript was written in German by Bedriaga and then translated into Russian by Alexander Nikolsky. Original printed gray wrappers, folio (27.9 cm width x 35.7 cm height), housed in a custom-made black cloth clam-shell box. This work presents the herpetological collections made by the Russian explorer Nikolai Przewalsky on his five expeditions to China made from 1867 to 1885. This volume represents the first major scientific treatise on the amphibians and reptiles of northern China. It covers a vast region from the Amur (Heilong Jiang) and Ussuri (Wusuli Jiang) river basins in northeastern China westward through Mongolia, the Ordos Plateau, and Gansu to Chinese Turkestan (later called Sinkiang and today, Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region) on the Russo-Kazakh border and to the Tanggula mountains on the border of Tibet. The herpetological collections in toto amounted to some 1,200 specimens and included nine species of amphibians (salamanders 1, frogs 8) and 69 of reptiles (lizards 57, snakes 11, turtles 1), of which 30 were named by Bedriaga. Many of the new species were first published in two papers in the Annuaire du Musée Zoologique de l'Académie Impériale des Sciences de St.-Petersbourg (in volume 10 for 1905, published in 1907). Bedriaga's other new species were first published in this monograph. Although Bedriaga left Russia in 1873 to live in Germany, France, and Italy, he continued to have an interest in the Russian herpetofauna. The finely detailed plates were lithographed in Milan and Florence and the text was printed in Saint Petersburg (modified after Kraig Adler). From the library of Kraig Adler with his bookplate. Light marginal foxing to the front wrapper of Part 1, minor bump to the top outer corner of Part 2, light browning to the outer margins of the front wrapper of Part 3, a few tissue guards with light foxing, in a fine custom-made black cloth-covered clam-shell box; overall a tight copy in near fine condition..

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