A Narrative of Travels on the Amazon and Rio Negro -
Alfred Russel Wallace
1853 - Reeve and Co., London - First Edition
First edition, finely bound, illustrated with one colour lithographed frontispiece, eight lithographic plates by and after Wallace, one map, and a folding letterpress vocabulary table.
In 1848, spurred by their shared reading interests in natural history, Wallace, 25 years old at the time, and Henry Walter Bates boarded a ship for the Amazon basin and his first fieldwork expedition to the Amazon, 1848-1852. Upon Wallace's return in 1852, his ship caught fire and sunk in the Atlantic, destroying all of his notes and collections. Remarkably, he was able to compile both works, Palm Trees and this narrative of his journey. “That one might demonstrate the fact of evolution through a detailed tracing out of individual phylogenies over time and space was apparent to [Wallace] early on, and the Amazon was to afford a natural laboratory to this end" [ODNB] ‘Meticulous in its detail and impressive in its scope, Wallace’s Narrative of Travels on the Amazon and Rio Negro documents a four-year expedition that launched his scientific career. Wallace's sharp observations of Amazonian geology, topography, flora, fauna and peoples provide a stimulating account of the region.’ [OUP]  More Details
Price: HK$ 28,000 |
