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With 8 woodcuts made for the 1634 edition (a hunting scene using falcons, and 7 birds of prey)

HARMONT, Pierre.
Le miroir de fauconnerie, ou se verra l'instruction pour choisit, nourrir, & traicter, dresser & faire voler toute sorte d'oyseaux, ...
Rouen, Clément Malassis, 1650. 4to (23 x 16.5 cm). With a woodcut illustration of a hunt using falcons on the title-page (9 x 9.5 cm) and 7 nearly full-page woodcut illustrations of birds of prey on integral leaves. Half red goatskin morocco (1930s?) signed on the free endleaf "F. SAULTIER REL.". 38, [2 blank] pp.
€ 6,500
Rare fifth edition, the first published outside of Paris, of a concise practical handbook on the choosing, training, care and feeding of birds of prey for hunting, by the falconer to Louis XIII, first published in 1620. "Copies of this work [in any edition] are very difficult to procure" (Harting). The hunting scene on the title-page, which has no related illustration in the first edition or in d'Arcussia, shows two men in the foreground, one blowing a horn and with a dog on a leash, the other holding a falcon and with hawking paraphernalia. It shows falcons attacking birds in the sky, and a hunting scene with dogs and men on horseback chasing a stag in the background.
With a few minor stains and faint offsetting, but still in good condition, the binding with very slight wear to the fore-edge corners, but otherwise fine. A rare and important practical handbook on falconry, illustrated with the woodcuts of the second (1634) edition, including a hunting scene not in the first edition. Bibl. Mun. Rouen, Histoires de chasses (exhib. cat. 1992-93), 79; Harting, Bibl. accipitraria 156 note; Souhart, col. 238; Thiébaud, col. 493; USTC 6814292 (1 copy); cf. Schwerdt, pp. 230-231 (1620 ed.); for the binder: Fléty, p. 159.
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Related Subjects:

Horses, hunting, sport & games  >  Falconry, Fishing & Hunting
Natural history  >  Birds / Ornithology