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Published in Oxford in 1956, this is the First Edition of this extremely scarce book on the Fossil Reptiles collected by Alfred N. Leeds from the Oxford Clay Pits around Peterborough. This example retains its dustjacket, a slim format, 9 inches tall, 104 pages, with a small number of illustrations (all pictured). The jacket has some loss at corners and spine ends, some marks and some surface wear to rear panel from removed label, internally some browning to endpapers, else contents nice and clean, no inscriptions. Alfred Nicholson Leeds ( 1847 ?1917) was an English amateur palaeontologist. Biography Leeds was born at Eyebury, Peterborough, the youngest of the eight children of Edward Thurlow Leeds (1802?51) and Eliza Mary Leeds (née Nicholson). He was educated at Warwick School. He had wanted to become a doctor, but circumstances meant that from 1868 he had to take on the management of Eyebury Farm (in The Fens, and historically attached to Peterborough Abbey) as a gentleman farmer. His elder brother Charles, a student at the University of Oxford, had been encouraged by Professor John Phillips to persevere in collecting fossils from near his home. Alfred joined him in these searches, and between them they developed better methods of disinterring, and of scientifically recording, fossils in soft clay than had been used before. (They rewarded the workmen at the clay pits (which served a brickworks in Fletton, Peterborough) for not doing so themselves, but instead sending notice to Eyebury.) In 1887, Charles emigrated to New Zealand; but Alfred continued to search for fossils, assisted by his wife and by their second son, Edward Thurlow Leeds (1877?1955, Keeper of the Ashmolean Museum 1928?45). He amassed one of the largest collections of fossil vertebrates in the world. In 1889, his portrait was painted by the 17-year-old William Nicholson. From 1890 onwards, he began to present his most important specimens of Jurassic fossils from the Oxford Clay near Peterborough to the British Museum. He was a Fellow of the Geological Society; in 1893, he was awarded part of its Lyell Fund. Other museums in the UK and elsewhere hold items from his collection; including the National Museum of Ireland. An extinct genus of fish, Leedsichthys, and several extinct species have been named in his honour. Seller Inventory # 003774
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