| Item Description: | First edition translated by Antonio Laur into the Italian from the French "Traité des vaches laitierès" (Franç̦ois Guénon)--which appeared for the first time in Bordeaux in 1838. (Source: Studio Bibliografico Cordero, no. 548).
Mark Selvaggio, bookseller, description: The relatively rare first Italian edition, prepared by Antonio Laur, from the French edition of Guénon’s Traité des vaches laitierès (Bordeaux, 1838). A prominent French vet, François Guénon (1796-1855) believed that by a thorough inspection of a cow’s morphology—specifically, the cow’s derriere as it were—one was able to recognize visually by an inspection of such anatomical points as a cow’s udder, the quantity and quality of the milk that the animal was capable of producing. To that end [pun intended], Guénon developed a classification system involving eight categories (divided into classes, orders and degrees), identifying all of the relevant “action points” on the cow’s backside— shown in the accompanying nine lithographed plates, keyed to the pertinent copy in the text. While the plates are based on the ones in the 1838 edition, there were redrawn and lithographed by a local printer (Pieroni) from Ancora, who also produced the lithographed front wrapper illustration. |
|---|