ADANSON (Michel). Natural history of Senegal. Shellfish. Avec la relation abrégée d'un voyage fait en ce pays pendant les années 1749-1753. Paris, Bauche, 1757. In-4, marbled calf, spine decorated, red edges (Binding of the period). First edition. It is illustrated with a fold-out map of Senegal drawn by Philippe Buache and 19 fold-out plates of shellfish, drawn and engraved by Marie-Thérèse Reboul. The first part of the book contains the account of the voyage of exploration that the young naturalist Michel Adanson (1727-1806), a pupil of Réaumur and Jussieu, undertook in Senegal over a period of five years. The writer David Diop recently drew inspiration from this fascinating travel account in his novel La Porte du voyage sans retour ou les cahiers secrets de Michel Adanson, published by Seuil in 2021. The second part contains Histoire des coquillages, an important essay on conchyliology in which "Adanson proposed his universal method, a system of classification different from those of Buffon and Linnaeus. He based his classification of all organised beings on the consideration of each organ" (Encyclopædia Britannica). In his Éloge historique de Adanson, read at the Académie des Sciences on 5 January 1807, Georges Cuvier nevertheless pointed out that "this book opened the doors of the Académie des Sciences and the Royal Society of London to Mr Adanson, then only 30 years old, not because he had gone to look for a few shells on the coast of Africa, but because he announced himself as a man of genius". A very fine copy. Gay, n°2883 - Chadenat, n°2760 - Pritzel, n°20 - Nissen, ZBI, n°27.