HOOLA VAN NOOTEN (Berthe). Selected flowers, fruits and foliage from the island of Java painted from nature. Brussels, Leipzig: Librairie européenne C. Muquardt, [1880]. - In-folio, 556 x 400 : (46 ff.), 40 plates. Publisher's brown half cloth boards with corners, smooth spine. Third edition published in English and French by Merzbach and Falk, publishers-libraries of the Court and the Count of Flanders, of this spectacular collection of 40 plates in chromolithography after the paintings of the Dutch artist Berthe Hoola van Nooten (1817-1892). These plates represent 40 plant species from the island of Java, where the artist had gone with her brother, but also from the English Indies, China and tropical America. They are accompanied by descriptions giving the history and uses of each plant. The paintings were reproduced in chromolithography by the Belgian lithographer Pieter de Pannemaeker. The first edition was published in 1863 and the second in 1866. This is the third edition, containing a new epistle dated "Island of Java, May 1880". It is announced in the Bibliographie de Belgique in the December 1880 issue and in France in the issue 45 of November 5, 1881 of the Journal de l'imprimerie et de la librairie, where it is also specified that its edition was only 310 copies, that is to say 300 unnumbered copies on vellum paper, as it is the case here, and 10 numbered copies on bristol board. Hoola van Nooten admits at the beginning of the preface that this book was conceived primarily for women: "This book is especially for women. Its object, its purpose, its tendency, the framework in which it is circumscribed, everything imbues it with the character of the position and mission of our sex, a position and mission admirably described by one of the great writers of our time, in these terms that are as simple as they are profound: 'Charity in humanity. "" Very damaged paperboard with tears, lacks and stains. Freckles affecting mostly the text leaves, the plates have only a few scattered freckles without gravity.