Nicoll’s Birds of Egypt. Published under the authority of the Egyptian Government.
London: Hugh Rees Ltd., 1930. First edition. With frontisportrait and thirty-seven plates, including thirty-one in color, and several photogravures. Also with three folding color maps and eighty-eight text illustrations. With various appendices, bibliography and index. Binding extremities lightly rubbed, small goudge and light discoloration at foot of Volume II, endpapers lightly foxed. A very good, clean set. Original apple green cloth with front covers and spines stamped in gilt. Two volumes, folio. xvi, 348; [4], pp/[349]-700. Item #15247
The project of writing an ornithological history of Egypt was begun by M ichael J. Nicoll, the Assistant Director of the Zoological Gardens of Giza, who died before he could complete the task. It was continued by Colonel Richard Meinertzhagen (1878-1967), a troubled man who at once championed the cause of an independent Jewish state in Israel and was thought to be a Nazi sympathizer. As a naturalist, Meinertzhagen came under fire for stealing other people’s specimens and fabricating data to go with them. Still, the present work remains a classic.
Anker 363. Nissen IVB, 675 under Nicoll.
Price: $650.00