The only copy of Les Trochilidees on BHL has no drawings?
Les trochilidées, ou Les colibris et les oiseaux-mouches, suivis d'un index général, dans lequel sont décrites et classées méthodiquement toutes les races et espèces du genre trochilus ... - Biodiversity Heritage Library .
Here is a Google Book with a drawing of O. atala showing the blues and greens. The drawing is inbetween 114 and page 115:
Les trochilidées ou les colibris et les oiseaux-mouches /
A prospectus was published in 1831 and says that 13 livraisons were anticipated with five planches each, therefore 65 planches were planned for. Laurent's post shows 14 livraisons with 4, 5, and 9 planches totalling 66. The prospectus shows L'Altala as Pl. 42 was anticipated in 1831.
t.26 (1831) - Bulletin des sciences naturelles et de géologie. - Biodiversity Heritage Library .
Yes, as Martin also noted, there is another copy on BHL, which has plates:
Les trochilidées : - Biodiversity Heritage Library
(Beware that this copy has the 1st and 2nd gatherings inverted (i.e., the text starts with pp. 17-32, then pp. 1-16, then pp. 33
et seq.).
(Incidentally, pp. xviij-xix of the
Index général are also lacking in the plate-less copy, but are present in this other copy.)
My data comes directly from
Bibliographie de la France:
1832 volume -
Bibliographie de la France (see entries 2431, 3523, 4484, 5143, 5515, 6086, 6334)
1833 volume -
Bibliographie de la France (see entries 1061, 2021, 4172, 4447, 5262, 6874)
The plans had already changed to 14 livraisons when the first livraison was issued:
Bibliographie de la France, "L'ouvrage aura 14 livraisons."
There were officially one in-8° sheet of text and 4 to 5 plates / livraison, but livr. 10 and 11 were issued simultaneously, with two sheets of text and 9 plates in total:
Bibliographie de la France.
The complete work has 66 plates. The main text (without the front matters) has 171 pp. + a blank page; the
Index général (including its title page) has xliij (= 43) pp. + a blank page; the front matters have 8 pp. in total (half-title page + verso, title page + verso; and iv (= 4) pp. for "avis de l'éditeur" and "l'auteur au souscripteur"). This makes a total of 172 + 44 + 8 = 224 pp. These figures match what was announced as published in
Bibliogr. France.
(One
caveat, however: the
Index général did not actually require that the main text be entirely published to be prepared : it is paged separately and only provides references to plate numbers, not to pages in the main text. Thus there is in principle a possibility that its publication started before the end of the publication of the main text, which would displace a part of the publication of the main text to later livraisons. The title page of the
Index général (which also appears to be the first page of the first signature of the
Index) bears the date "M DCCC XXXII" (1832) : this must be accepted as incorrect if it was published after the completion of the main text, which cannot possibly have been before 1833.)
