[Rarebooks] fa: [SEA SPONGES] Report from the VOYAGE OF H.M.S. CHALLENGER 1888 - Map & 44 Plates

[ArCh]

Auction ends Sunday, March 26. Images and more details can be found at the URL below or by searching for the seller name arch_in_la. 

https://tinyurl.com/5n75n6u7

Thanks again,
Ardwight Chamberlain
Ann Arbor, MI, USA


[William Johnson Sollas:] Report on the Scientific Results of the Voyage of H.M.S. Challenger during the Years 1873-76... Zoology— Vol. XXV (Report on the Tetractinellida collected by H.M.S. Challenger... By W. J. Sollas). London: Her Majesty's Stationery Office, 1888. Tall, thick 4to (33 cm) in original publisher's pebbled green cloth, spine lettered in gilt; [6], clxvi, 458 pp., plus 44 colored chromolithographic plates, each with accompanying (unpaginated) explanatory text leaves; in-text woodcuts; folding map (complete).

One of some fifty volumes resulting from the H.M.S. Challenger expedition, this one, complete in itself, on Tetractinellida, an order of sea sponges. The author, W.J. Sollas, an Irish biologist and professor of geology and mineralogy (and, unfortunately, an early exponent of eugenics), gave his name to at least eight suborders of Tetractinellida. The scientific findings of the epic forty-two month, 127,600 kilometer-long voyage of the Challenger "permanently changed our relationship with the planet's oceans" and gave birth to modern oceanography (BBC: Travel). The ill-fated Challenger space shuttle was named after the vessel.

Binding with wear and fraying to the corners, bumping to the spine ends, mild toning to the text leaves, light spotting to the edges of the text block, else clean and sound, securely bound, with the plates in very good or better condition. The page gatherings are unopened (meaning the text leaves are still joined at the top edges as issued), hence unread. Loosely laid in is a printed slip from the project's editor, John Murray, a biologist and a member of the expedition, calling for papers and references to help "facilitate the compilation of a complete Bibliography" of the series.