Notes of a Botanist on the Amazon and Andes: Being Records of Travel on the Amazon and Its Tributaries...
London: Macmillan and Co., Limited, 1908. First edition. Black and white photographs, drawings, and seven maps. Two volumes, half green morocco by Bayntun-Riviere. Octavos. lii, 518 and xii, 542 pages. Very good to near fine. Handsomely bound in green cloth with dark green leather spines and fore corners, gilt-stamped spine titles, marbled endpapers, top edges gilt. A few patches of silverfishing to upper board of volume I and lower board of volume II, prior owner bookplate neatly tipped onto front pastedowns, otherwise fine.
English botanist Richard Spruce was one of the great Victorian era botanical explorers, and this is the record of his 15-year exploration of the Amazon and its tributaries, from the Andes to its mouth. Spruce was in South America during the years 1849-1864. Near the end of his expedition he studied the indigenous cultivation of cinchona in the Andes of Peru, then successfully exported seeds and young plants. Cinchona was cultivated to produce quinine, an effective drug in the prevention of malaria.
Illustrated with a tissue-guarded frontispiece portrait in volume I, plus 71 other illustrations and 7 maps.
Item #793
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