First edition, first state, and in original parts. This is the first book with color-printed plates made in America and the first color-plate American botanical (along with Barton's Vegetable materia medica). "Bigelow originally intended to illustrate his massive work in traditional fashion with hand-colored copperplates...Finding this process too slow and expensive, Bigelow searched for a method that would allow the swift and easy application of color directly onto the plate" (Norman). The technique, a sort of aquatint, was developed independently of any knowledge of lithography. Richard Wolfe identified the first state by the presence of only hand-colored plates in Part I, as in this copy. Many copies have mixed hand-colored/color-printed plates (see Wolfe's monograph on this edition, 1979). Garrison/Morton 1842; Norman 234; Reese American Color Plate Books 9; Sabin 5294.