Good impression on wove paper. Description: First Edition. Text Latin. This book is the first dealing entirely with entomology to be published in the British Isles. It originated with a manuscript by the Swiss physician and naturalist Conrad Gesner (1516-1565), which remained unpublished. The manuscript passed to the English scholar Thomas Penny (c.1532-88), who spent fifteen years bringing together additional material for the book, a task which remained incomplete at the time of his death in 1588. Penny bequeathed the manuscript to Moffet, who added further new material, chiefly taken from Edward Wotton's "De Differentiis Animalium Libri Decem", and eventually completed the manuscript in 1589. It remained unpublished when Moffet himself died in 1604. Sir Theodore Mayerne, a physician and scholar eventually acquired the manuscript and published it, with the addition of a dedication, in 1634. The work was illustrated with 580 woodcuts. The illustration of the American Swallowtail butterfly on p 98 is notable as the first representation in print of an American butterfly. The work also includes spiders, with notes about their many 'virtues', such as swallowing spiders to prevent gout, or that spiders can foretell the weather. One theory suggests that Moffet's daughter, Patience is the person referred to in the English nursery rhyme, 'Little Miss Muffet'. 20th century printing. Condition is good.