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WALLACE, Alfred Russel. The Malay Archipelago: The Land Of The Orang-Utan, And The Bird Of Paradise. A Narrative Of Man And Nature.
London: Macmillan And Co., 1869. In two volumes. First edition. 8vo., orig. green cloth with a small circular pictorial decoration in gilt on the upper boards, (xxiv), 478, (2), (52)pp.ads dated "December 1868; (4), 524pp. With 8 engraved plates, maps including 2 folding, and illustrations in the text. Large folding map in volume one reinforced at one fold (on verso), bookplate, inner hinges cracked, the binding has some wear along the spine, spine ends and corners, but this is still a very good copy of an important book.
"By the time he left the Malay archipelago, just less than eight years after his arrival in Malaya on 20 April 1854, Wallace had visited every important island in the group, many on multiple occasions. His efforts, drawing on perhaps 70 separate expeditions (requiring some 14,000 miles of island-to-island sailing in native crafts), reaped the astonishing harvest of 126,500 natural history specimens, including more than 200 new species of birds and well over 1000 new insects. His many experiences are imperishably detailed in his splendidly successful book The Malay archipelago (1869), a work that remained in print in multiple editions more than a century later, and which continues to make for fascinating reading. In it are recorded, among other exploits, his efforts to capture specimens of the bird of paradise, his pursuit of the orang-utan, his activities in New Guinea (where he was one of the first Europeans to set up a residence), his various dealings with the region's many native peoples, and numerous vignettes conveying the joys and vicissitudes of the field naturalist's work. It was during the period from 1854 to 1862 that Wallace fully came into his own as a zoogeographer. The Malay archipelago provided the ideal geographical setting for species distribution studies, not only as an end in themselves, but as evidence critical to elucidation of the evolutionary process. His 1859 paper "On the zoological geography of the Malay archipelago" (Journal and Proceedings of the Linnean Society, Zoology, 4, 1860, 172-184pp), a classic in that field, included his delineation of the abrupt zoogeographical discontinuity between the oriental and Australian faunal realms that now bears his name: Wallace's Line." (DNB)