Lot No. 10: RUSSELL, PATRICK

AN ACCOUNT OF INDIAN SERPENTS COLLECTED ON THE COAST OF COROMANDEL

Medium: Printed Books
Year: 1796
Size: 20.7 x 14.5 inches
Place: London

Unsold (reserve not met)

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10,00,000 - 20,00,000

Estimate US$

12000-24000

Ends at Oct 17, 2024 07:13 PM IST

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RUSSELL, PATRICK

AN ACCOUNT OF INDIAN SERPENTS COLLECTED ON THE COAST OF COROMANDEL

CONTAINING DESCRIPTIONS AND DRAWINGS OF EACH SPECIES; TOGETHER WITH EXPERIMENTS AND REMARKS ON THEIR SEVERAL POISONS.

Year: 1796

Size: 53 x 37 cm (20.7 x 14.5 inches)

Published by: W. Bulman and Co., Shakespeare Press for George Nicol, Bookseller to his Majesty 1796.
First and only edition, Large Folio, viii + PP 92

45 Engraved Plates total 2 of which are hand-coloured.

Contemporary dark brown half leather over matching paper boards, Spine with five raised bands, title in gilt in second and third, gilt rules on all. Fine condition.

Extremely Rare

FIRST EDITION OF THE FIRST PUBLISHED WORK ON INDIAN SNAKES.

In 1785 Russell succeeded the Dane John Gerard Koenig as botanist to the East India Company in the Carnatic. In this capacity he made large collections of specimens and drawings of the plants, fishes, and reptiles of the country and he proposed to the governor of Madras in 1785 that the company's medical officers and others should be officially requested to collect specimens and information concerning useful plants of the various districts of India.

In 1787 he drew up a preliminary memoir on the poisonous snakes of the Coromandel coast, which was printed officially at Madras .

[In 1794] he wrote the preface to the Plants of the Coast of Coromandel by William Roxburgh, a sumptuous work published at the expense of the East India Company, and one outcome of his own recommendations made ten years before. In 1796 he published on the same scale, at the cost of the company,

The first fascicle of his Account of Indian Serpents in folio, with forty-six plates, forty-four of which were the product of a huge collaborative enterprise in which Russell enlisted the help of other company servants. Russell's Account also relied heavily on Indian knowledge, although he subjected local wisdom to the trial of experiment and his own observations.

According to Adler, this work may well be the most physically imposing book ever written exclusively on a hematological topic. All species are extensively described, and their local names are added. In several, orthographic varieties are noted between the name as noted in the descriptive text and the same on the plates.

As a physician as well as a naturalist to the East India Company in the Carnatic he was concerned with the problem of snakebite and made it his aim to find a way for people to identify venomous snakes. He also made a large collection of plants. One of the snakes he identified was Katuka Rekula Poda which he noted was not well known to Europeans but was second only to the cobra in its lethality.

Russell attempted to classify the snakes using the nature of scales but his quest was to find an easy way to separate the venomous snakes from the non-venomous.

Provenance : Collection of a Gentleman

Fine condition

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Lot No. 10: RUSSELL, PATRICK

AN ACCOUNT OF INDIAN SERPENTS COLLECTED ON THE COAST OF COROMANDEL

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RUSSELL, PATRICK

AN ACCOUNT OF INDIAN SERPENTS COLLECTED ON THE COAST OF COROMANDEL

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