Harriman Alaska Series Volumes VIII and IX: Insects

Washington: Smithsonian Institution, 1910. Hardcover. Very good. Volume VIII: pp ix, 238, indexed, with color frontispiece and 16 other plates, as well as figures and line drawings in the text; Volume IX: pp ix, 284, indexed, with photogravure frontispiece and three plates. Original green cloth stamped in gilt. Volume XIII has a small area of dampstaining on the back cover (not affecting the interior) and light rubbing to the spine ends; Volume IX has some minor discoloration to the front board. Both volumes internally very clean and sound. Organized and financed by railroad magnate Edward H. Harriman, the Harriman Alaska Expedition included 25 scientists and naturalists, as well as sizeable team of photographers and artists, among them Edward Curtis, Frank Dellenbaugh, and Louis Agassiz Fuertes. During the summer of 1899, the party cruised the waters off southeastern and southern Alaska and the eastern Aleutians, making numerous stops for scientific investigation and collecting. Trevor Kincaid, the expedition's entomologist, collected 8,000 insects representing a thousand species, of which 344 were previously unknown. A dozen specialists then received relevant parts of the collection for study and ultimately wrote the 18 papers contained in these two volumes.