FISHES. By Markus-Eliezer Bloch.

(1879) 1984 new edition. Folio (218 x 312mm). Pp256. 41 Colour plates by A.F. Lydon, engravings by Benjamin Fawcett. Fawn boards, angling scene in brown to upper board, spine titled in brown.

Markus-Eliezer bloch was born in 1723 in the town of Ansbach [in] Bavaria. He was born of indigent parents and apparently received no education until as an adolescent he went to live with a physician's family in Hamburg. Very little is known of his life during this period except that here he learned Latin and the rudiments of medicine. A few years later he moved to Berlin where he studied Medicine and Natural History. Years later in Frankfurt-am-Oder he practised as a physician until his death in 1799". Bloch did not travel during his lifetime and his knowledge of fish was drawn from his patron Professor F.H. Martini and at second-hand form the French explorer and naturalist, Plumier, some of whose work reached Bloch in Berlin. Two of the plates in this series of twelve are taken from drawings by Plumier. The twelve plates in this book were first published in Bloch's, The Natural History of Fishes, which was published in Berlin in four parts in 1781 and 1782.