Rymsdyk, John & Andrew. Museum Britannicum, being an Exhibition of a Great Variety of Antiquities and Natural Curiosities, belonging to that Noble and Magnificent Cabinet, the British Museum.

London. Printed by I. Moore for the authors. 1778.

Folio. pp. (ii), xvi, 84. With an engraved title-page vignette of the British Museum, 2 engraved text illustrations, and 30 full-page engraved plates. Later polished brown half calf, red leather title lable on spine; marbled boards.First Edition.Among the curious engravings are depictions of the Taylor-Bird's nest (brought back from Bengal), pearls, an encrusted Roman skull and sword, Roman signals and ensigns, eggs, annuli and rings, a Spanish dagger, an encrusted copper horse-shoe, a stylus (for writing on wax tablets) and Roman fibulae, a Jamaican spider's nest (complete with the trap-door), an internal view of the shell called Pinna Marina, with a pair of men's gloves made of the beard of the Pinna Marina from Andalusia, an unfired clay brick taken out of the foundation of the supposed Tower of Babylon together with two Egyptian urns, Druid and Egyptian amulets, the Scythian Lamb, a Cambodian Swallow's nest, dice, calculi, a coral hand, and a tear-vial from Sir William Hamilton's collection.
John van Rymsdyk was a natural history draftsman, born in Holland in the early eighteenth-century. He settled in Bristol and was engaged by Dr. W. Hunter to make anatomical drawings. In the present volume. Rymsdyk was assisted by his son Andrew.