Annual Report of the State Botanist : State of New York, no. 68, January 1895; [WITH] Report of the State Botanist on Edible Fungi of New York 1895-99 by Charles H. Peck, M.A, State Botanist.

Albany, [New York]: University of the State of New York, 1897; 1901.

Two volumes, issued consecutively, but complete in this form. Quartos (30.5 x 24.5; 29.5 x 23.5 cm.), [iv], 6-241 pages; one black & white, and forty-three color lithographed plates; [iv], 134-234 pages; thirty-four color lithographed plates. All sixty-eight plates chromo-lithographed by C. Fausel after drawings by Charles Peck. Second editions. Taken together, these volumes form the body of work by Charles Horton Peck on edible mushrooms. Peck was a leading American mycologist through the second half of the 19th century and into the first decades of the 20th. Self-taught as a mycologist, he worked as a botanist in the New York State Museum, he collected and described more that 2,700 new varieties by the time he left his position in 1917. His work was published solely in the form of twenty-one annual reports and twenty-one bulletins published by the state museum. "Outstanding contributions [to the study of fungi in North America] were made by Charles Peck in his long series of annual reports from 1867 to 1915 as botanist to the State Cabinet of Natural History (later the New York State Museum) at Albany." [Ainsworth, Introduction to the History of Mycology. (Cambridge, 1976), page 229]. Peck's series actually began three years earlier, in 1864, with Annual Report no. 18, and ended nine years later, in 1924, with Bulletin 266. He is said to have traveled by foot, railroad, stage coach and wagon to collect specimens across New York State. He was the first to climb Mount Wright (1893), and was known to practice microscopy in the field with a portable microscope, and dried specimens by sunlight or at night by a campfire. Nearly one thousand of his drawings and paintings of fungi reside in the State Museum. (New York State Museum. Online biography of Charles H. Peck). Both volumes with some light soiling, and a few light pencil notes to text; plates clean. First volume bound in full green, gilt-titled cloth; text block a bit shaken; edgewear to cloth but near very good. Second volume in Printed, paper-covered boards; rubbing and some wear to edges and spine. Good plus. Scarce to find both volumes together. [Ainsworth, Introduction to the History of Mycology, page 318; Volbracht, Myko Libri, page 335].

Price: $450.00