Buffon's "Natual History" - "SPHEX, VIATICA etc." - Copper Engraving - 1805

  RARE, ANTIQUE COPPER ENGRAVED INSECT PRINT This 209 year old print is from Count de Buffon's  "NATURAL HISTORY, GENERAL & PARTICULAR". This print came from a  book published by G. Kearsley in London in 1809. The engraver was Heath. ___________________________________________________________________________________ Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon (1707 –  1788) was a French naturalist, mathematician, cosmologist, and encyclopedic author. His works influenced the next two generations of naturalists, including Jean-Baptiste Lamarck and Georges Cuvier. Buffon published thirty-six quarto volumes of his Histoire naturelle during his lifetime; with additional volumes based on his notes and further research being published in the two decades following his death. It has been said that "Truly, Buffon was the father of all thought in natural history in the second half of the 18th century." In 1739 he was appointed head of the Parisian Jardin du Roi with the help of Maur