Mendes da Costa, Emanuel; A Natural History Of Fossils. By Emanuel Mendes da Costa, Fellow of the Royal and Antiquarian Societies of London, and Member of the Imperial Academy Naturæ Curiosorum of Germany. Vol. 1. Part I. (All published) London, Printed for L. Davis and C. Reymers, against Grays-Inn-Gate, Holbourn, Printers to the Royal Society.  MDCCLVII. Quarto, pp. vi, 2  "A List Of The Subscribers."; 294, plate (showing the basalt columns of Giant's Causeway).

The work is complete and in a 20th century full calf with gilt titles and spine panels, marbled text block edges. The binding is tight and pristine. title page lightly soiled, owners name erased from upper corner of title page, minor damp margin to outer tips of last 15 pages well outside text. In very good condition.
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An English mineralogist and paleontologist Mendes da Costa (1717-1791) had a wide ranging interest in natural history, and earned his living as a dealer in shells and minerals and by writing and lecturing. He was also a clerk at the Royal Society from 1763 until 1767. He lost this position and his reputation when he was arrested and imprisoned for the embezzlement of subscriptions to another volume of “Natural History of Fossils”. Thus the one volume work with a short subscriber list showing about 106 copies of the work.
Mendes da Costa had intended that this be the first volume of a multi-volume work, which was never completed. Part one contains the preface and descriptions of Earths and Stones and also contains an interesting description and plate showing Giant's Causeway, a geologic outcropping of columnar basalt. The limited number of subscriptions makes this a rare work.