The Game Birds of India, Burmah, and Ceylon - Allan Octavian Hume, Charles H. T. Marshall 1879-81 - Hume and Marshall, Calcutta - First Editions A superb and thus rare example of this three volume work, in the original gilt decorated bindings, and containing the complete set of 144 colour plates. All three illustrated title pages are also present.

Hume, ‘
the Father of Indian Ornithology’, put together this work using contributions and notes from a network of 200 or more correspondents. Hume delegated the task of getting the plates made to Marshall. The chromolithographs of the birds were drawn by W. Foster, E. Neale, (Miss) M. Herbert, Stanley Wilson and others and the plates were produced by F. Waller in London. Hume had sent specific notes on colours of soft parts and instructions to the artists. He was unsatisfied with many of the plates and included additional notes on the plates in the book. This book was started at the point when the government demoted Hume and only the need to finance the publication of this book prevented him from retiring from service. He had estimated that it would cost £4,000 to publish it and he retired from service on 1 January 1882 after the publication.
  Allan Octavian Hume, CB ICS (1829-1912) was a member of the Imperial Civil Service (later the Indian Civil Service), a political reformer, ornithologist and botanist who worked in British India. He was one of the founders of the Indian National Congress, a political party that was later to lead in the Indian independence movement. A notable ornithologist, Hume has been called "the Father of Indian Ornithology" and, by those who found him dogmatic, "the Pope of Indian ornithology’.

Colonel Charles Henry Tilson Marshall (1841-1927) was a British Army Officer, serving in the Punjab, India, his last post being Assistant Commissioner of Lahore from which he retired in 1896. In his spare time he collected birds in the Punjab and the Himalayas, and sent these to Allan Octavian Hume.

Provenance: Contemporary signatures of author and ornithologist Richard James Balston (1838-1916), ‘Springfield, Maidstone’ and his son Major George. Richard Balston D.S.O. (1879-1967) dated ‘4-1904’ to volume I. Pencil notes to volume III, some quite pithy, so we have not removed them.

Reference: Nissen,
Die Zoologische Buchillustration, IVB 463. Zimmer, Catalogue of the Edward E. Ayer Ornithological Library, I 314.

Three large octavo volumes (book size 25.7x16.8cm), pp. [1 (pictorial title)] [1] 2 (preface), slip (addressed ‘To the Reader’), [2] ii 279 [1]; [1 (pictorial title)] [1] ii 264; [1 (pictorial title)] [1] ii 438 vi (index). Additional errata slips are scattered throughout the text. In publisher’s green cloth, lettered and ruled in gilt to spines and front boards, intricate vignettes of birds blocked in gilt to front boards, this pattern and lettering repeated in blind to rear boards all edges trimmed, with brown coated endpapers.

Collation of plates: Vol.I 45; Vol.II 44; Vol.III 55. No plates missing, the following birds are either not included (with explanation given) or they are combined with another bird on a single plate (numbers given are the page opposite the plate location or page where there is a note):- Vol.I - 81 see 93 and note 92; Vol.II - 223 see 217, 235 see 233, 253 see 245, 261 see note 263; Vol.III - 47 see 52 & note 47, 305 see note 308, 373 see 359.
  Condition: Near fine, some foxing to a few pages, heavier to sections of volume III.   Ref: 111645   Price: HK$ 22,000