An account of Indian Serpents, Collected on the Coast of Coromandel [with] A Continuation of an Account of Indian Serpents containing descriptions and figures from specimens and drawings transmitted form various parts of India.

2 vol., vol 1. Contains 46 hand coloured illustrations on 45 sheets , plus two other engraved plates, 1796; vol. 2 contains 42 hand coloured illustrations on 39 sheets, frontispiece and two other engraved plates, 1801; both volumes are complete, matching contemporary full calf, labels, folios, London: for George Nicol.

First Edition of the First Published Work on Indian Snakes and one of the greatest works dedicated to the animal.

Russel worked for the British East India Company in Carnatic in the 1780s. While stationed there he made large collections of specimens and drawings of the plants, fishes, and reptiles of the country, and became increasingly concerned with the problem of snakebites. Using information collected from Indigenous sources as well as Company officials, he began extensive studies on venomous snakes in the hopes of creating a means in which to identify them and for the creation of antidotes. In 1787 he drew up a preliminary memoir on the poisonous snakes of the Coromandel coast, which was printed officially at Madras, in 1794.

‘In 1796 he published on the same scale, at the cost of the company, the first fascicle of his Account of Indian Serpents in folio, with forty-six plates, forty-four of which were the product of a huge collaborative enterprise in which Russell enlisted the help of other company servants. Russell’s Account also relied heavily on Indian knowledge, although he subjected local wisdom to the trial of experiment and his own observations’ (ODNB).

Beginning in 1801, Russell expanded the current work with his Continuation, which reached four parts by 1809, and which added 41 plates. Of Russell’s work on Indian snakes, it is the Account alone that is typically found, and it is rare when seen with any part of the Continuation.

[Nissen ZBI, 3539; Wood, p. 547; ODNB]