Michael Scotus: Liber physiognomiae.

[Lyons]:  Guillaume Balsarin, [ca. 1488]
4to.   a-e⁸.   a2 missigned “aiij”.   [40] leaves.
Woodcut printer's device.
ISTC im00560000;  GW M23290;  Goff M560;  BMC VIII 278 (IA. 41770).

GIP number:	M42
Shelf-mark:	Sp Coll Ferguson Al-b.45 (see main library entry for this item)
Provenance:	David Laing (1793-1878), antiquary and librarian of the Signet Library:  lot 3349 in Catalogue of the second portion of the extensive and valuable library of the late David Laing ... which will be sold by auction by Messrs. Sotheby, Wilkinson & Hodge ... on Monday, the 5th of April, 1880 ... (London:  1880);  sold to Pickering for £0.13.0 according to the annotated British Library copy of the sale catalogue - shelfmark S.C.S. 797. Pickering & Chatto, booksellers and publishers, London (firm founded in 1820 by William Pickering, continued by his son, Basil Montagu Pickering, and purchased by Thomas Chatto in 1878);  see above. John Ferguson (1837-1916), Professor of Chemistry, University of Glasgow:  Ferguson’s pencil acquisition note on front fly leaf “John Ferguson ... April 20 1880 Laing’s Sale 3349” (presumably purchased from Pickering & Chatto). University of Glasgow:  Ferguson collection purchase, 1921.
Binding:	England, 19th-century sheep;  marbled endpapers (pastedowns not stuck down and inserted between them and the actual boards are two leaves extracted from an English newspaper dated May 1832);  without a spine title;  printed label with number “274” affixed to head of spine;  red-edged leaves.   Size:  190 x 137 mm.
Leaf size:	184 x 131 mm.
Annotations:	Occasional early marginal annotations and underlining;  “No 16” in pencil on inside of front board;  date “16 11 80” on rear free endpaper;  pencil initials “P S H” on front free endpaper.
Decoration:	Initials supplied in brown ink from c8 onwards in absence of printed guide-letters, a few in red or yellow outlined in brown ink (e.g. on leaf d1).
Imperfections:	Quires a and b heavily wormed, with loss of text.