McCoy, Frederick; Prodromus of the Palaeontology of Victoria; or, Figures and Descriptions of Victorian Organic Remains. Decades 2-7. Geological Survey of Victoria, Melbourne & London, 1875-1882. Quarto, pp. Decade 2, pp. 37, plates 11-20. Decade 3, pp. 40, plates 21-30. Decade 4, pp. 32, plates 31-40. Decade 5, pp. 41, plates 41-50. Decade 6, pp. 42, plates 51-60. Decade 7, pp. 30, plates 61-70. (The majority of the plates are colored). Lacks Decade 1.

The six decades are complete and bound in a later cloth with gilt titles, marbled end sheets and text block edges. The binding is tight and clean, library stamp of defunct Upsala College on end sheet. Plates are very clean. In very good condition. The works are rare.

Sir Frederick McCoy (1817-1899) was an Irish paleontologist, born in Dublin, who spent much of his career in Australia. His early years in Ireland were active ones. At the age of eighteen he published a Catalogue of Organic Remains compiled from specimens exhibited in the Rotunda at Dublin (1841). He assisted Sir RJ Griffith by studying the fossils of the Carboniferous and Silurian rocks of Ireland, and together they published A Synopsis of the Character of Carboniferous Limestone Fossils of Ireland (1844) and Synopsis of the Silurian Fossils of Ireland (1846). In 1846 Adam Sedgwick secured his services, and for four years McCoy devoted himself to the determination and arrangement of the fossils in the Woodwardian Museum at Cambridge. Together they prepared the monumental and now rare work entitled A Synopsis of the Classification of the British Palaeozoic Rocks, with a Systematic Description of the British Palaeozoic Fossils in the Geological Museum of the University of Cambridge (1855).
In 1854 McCoy accepted the newly founded professorship of natural science at the University of Melbourne where he remained for thirty years. Once in Melbourne he established the National Museum of Natural History and Geology in Melbourne and was its Director. It was here that he issued a series of works or decades entitled Prodromus of the Palaeontology of Victoria. Each decade contains approximately 10 plates with accompanying text descriptions. Each illustrates and describes a fossil (both vertebrate and invertebrate) from localities throughout Australia. The specimen described is usually found in the collections of the museum. The plates are quite stunning.