Australasia: Edited and Extended by Alfred R. Wallace. .... with Ethnological Appendix by A. H. Keane.

MINOR SCIENTIFIC CLASSIC HANDSOMELY BOUND
first edition tall 8vo. xx, 672pp., 20 coloured maps (most folding), numerous wood-engraved illustrations, contemporary dark blue polished calf prize binding, double gilt fillet border on sides, spine panelled by gilt decorated raised bands with the panels very richly gilt tooled, maroon morocco title label, gilt blocked arms of St. Columba's College on sides, marbled end papers, edges marbled to match, spine trifle rubbed at ends, else a nice copy.
Engraved prize label of St. Columb's College, Dublin, on front endpaper completed in manuscript as a prize to Edmund Knox in 1878.
Ferguson Bibliography of Australia 18146
Minor classic by one of the era's leading scientists and naturalists whose researches in the region covered by this book were a central his work.Wallace (1823 - 1913), co-discoverer with Charles Darwin of natural selection as the mechanism for the evolution of species, had in 1858 announced his discovery of an important zoogeographical boundary dividing the Indonesian archipelago into two zoological regions, the so called 'Wallace Line', and the culmination of this approach was his monumental The Geographical Distribution of Animals (1876) which "provided a rock-solid factual basis for evolutionary biology .. [and which] transformed the subject and became the standard authority for many years. In 1880 Wallace further applied his approach in evolutionary zoogeography to island flora and fauna. Whereas his great work of 1876 dealt with large groups of animals, in his Island Life (1880) he focused on species to examine variation, distribution, and dispersal. ... His later works on zoogeography represent summaries of these two great books" [Dictionary of Scientific Biography, vol.14, p.138-9]