Scarce third edition of this children’s book, particularly appealing for the many new illustrations by Jemima Blackburn, wonderfully drawn from nature, primarily at zoos in London and Edinburgh. The 29 colour plates show brilliantly-coloured animals, birds, fish, reptiles and insects. The artist of the mostly beautifully executed of these, Jemima Blackburn (1823–1909), was an Edinburgh painter and illustrator. Blackburn was a well-connected woman, her cousin the physicist James Clerk Maxwell was a close friend, and she was introduced to John Ruskin who took a keen interest in her work, even thinking of her "as the best artist he knows". Sir Edwin Landseer claimed that in the drawing of animals he had nothing to teach her.