3 volumes. viii, [4], 383, [1]; [4], 334; [2], vi, 348 pp. Illustrated with 155 hand-colored lithographed plates after J.J. and J.W. Audubon, drawn on stone by W.E. Hitchcock and printed and colored by J.T. Bowen & Co. of Philadelphia; tissue guards. (8vo) 10x6¾, period three quarter red morocco and marbled boards, raised bands, spines lettered and decorated in gilt, all edges gilt.

Later edition of the 'octavo' edition, which was first issued in parts between 1849 and 1854. The folio edition of aquatint plates was issued between 1845 and 1848 as The Viviparous Quadrupeds of North America, with octavo text volumes issued shortly afterwards. With the aid of a camera lucida the huge plates were reduced to their present size. The original paintings had been made by John James Audubon and his son John Woodhouse, with another son, Victor Gifford, adding many of the backgrounds. The lithographs were prepared by William E. Hitchcock and Ralph Trembly; most of them were printed and colored at the establishment of J. T. Bowen in Philadelphia, and a few by the firm of Nagel & Weingaertner of New York. By then old and sick, J. J. Audubon was very slightly involved in the production of the prints or of the text, leaving the former to his sons and the latter primarily to his collaborator, the Lutheran minister and naturalist John Bachman (1790-1874), whom Audubon had first visited at his home in Charleston in 1831. The folio edition of this great work had contained 150 plates. Six additional octavo plates were added in a supplement issued in 1854; and five of these were incorporated into the octavo editions. The first three octavo editions were published under the imprint of V. G. Audubon, after which George R. Lockwood became the publisher. Unlike the case with the octavo editions of The Birds of America, the quality of printing and coloring in the later editions of the Quadrupeds was not significantly compromised. Bennett, American Color-Plate Books, p. 5; Nissen, ZBI, 163; Reese, Nineteenth Century American Color Plate Books, 38 & 39; Sabin 2368.