Background:

These beautiful prints are from the First Edition of the Book of Birds published by Cassell and Company.  Cassell was one of the leading natural history publishers in England in the second half of the 1800s.  Their prints are noteworthy for placing the subjects in a natural setting.

The prints had accompanying narratives by Thomas Jones, an English surgeon and professor of anatomy at Kings College in London, based on the text of the German ornithologist Dr. Brehm.