Folio. [4], xx, 65pp, [1]. With a half-title and 15 lithographed plates. Contemporary half-calf, marbled boards, recently rebacked and recornered. Lightly rubbed. Plates foxed.

The second edition, printed in the year after the first. of French anatomist and physician Alfred Armand Louis Marie Velpeau's (1795-1867) richly illustrated monograph on embryology. The London Medical and Surgical Journal (No. 77, Vol. III., 1833, p.831) received the work favourably: 'Former physiologists commenced with the inferior animals, while our author began with man, and descended to the lowest animal. He divides his subject into two parts, the annexes, or appendages of the embryo, and the whole embryo itself. In treating the different parts of his inquiries, he gives a history of the conclusions of each, and confirms or rejects them by numerous original observations. He displays the most profound erudition and great dexterity as an anatomist. He gives fifteen plates, containing numerous representations elucidating all the peculiarities of the embryo. His work is the most complete that has ever appeared, and places its author among the most distinguished anatomists of modern times.'