With 8 woodcuts made for the 1634 edition (a hunting scene using falcons, and 7 birds of prey)
Le miroir de fauconnerie, ou se verra l’instruction pour choisit, nourrir, & traicter, dresser & faire voler toute sorte d’oyseaux [...].
4to (230 x 165 mm). With a woodcut illustration of a hunt using falcons on the titlepage (90 x 95 mm), 7 nearly full-page woodcut illustrations of birds of prey on integral leaves. 38, [2 blank] pp. Half red goatskin morocco (1930s?).
€ 6,500.00
Rare fifth edition, the first published outside of Paris, of a concise practical handbook on the choosing, training, care and feeding of birds of prey for hunting, by the falconer to Louis XIII, first published in 1620. "Copies of this work [in any edition] are very difficult to procure" (Harting). The hunting scene on the title-page, which has no related illustration in the first edition or in d'Arcussia, shows two men in the foreground, one blowing a horn and with a dog on a leash, the other holding a falcon and with hawking paraphernalia. It shows falcons attacking birds in the sky, and a hunting scene with dogs and men on horseback chasing a stag in the background.
With the modern armorial bookplate of the Verne d'Orcet family, whose great library on the subject of hunting was begun ca. 1900. With a few minor stains and faint offsetting, but still in good condition, the binding with very slight wear to the fore-edge corners, but otherwise fine. A rare and important practical hondbook on falconry, illustrated with the woodcuts of the second (1634) edition, including a hunting scene not in the first edition.
Bibl. Mun. Rouen, Histoires de chasses (exhib. cat. 1992–93), 79; Harting, Bibl. accipitraria 156 note; Souhart, col. 238; Thiébaud, col. 493; USTC 6814292 (1 copy); cf. Schwerdt, pp. 230–231 (1620 ed.); for the binder: Fléty, p. 159.