‎Wallace Alfred Russel‎
‎The Malay Archipelago : The Land of the Orang-utan and the Bird of Paradise‎

‎Malay Archipelago. The Land of the Orang-Utan and the Bird of Paradise. A Narrative of Travel with Studies of Man and Nature.‎

‎ London, Macmillan, 1890 Green cloth with gilt titles, 515 pages, 10 maps, two fold-out, numerous illustrations, 19 x 12.5 cm, English text. *fair condition, spine slightly damages, otherwise good.‎

‎The Malay Archipelago is a book by the English naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace which chronicles his scientific exploration, during the eight-year period 1854 to 1862, of the southern portion of the Malay Archipelago including Malaysia, Singapore, the islands of Indonesia, then known as the Dutch East Indies, and the island of New Guinea. It was published in two volumes in 1869, delayed by Wallace's ill health and the work needed to describe the many specimens he brought home. The book went through ten editions in the nineteenth century; it has been reprinted many times since, and has been translated into at least twelve languages. The book describes each island that he visited in turn, giving a detailed account of its physical and human geography, its volcanoes, and the variety of animals and plants that he found and collected. At the same time, he describes his experiences, the difficulties of travel, and the help he received from the different peoples that he met. The preface notes that he travelled over 14,000 miles and collected 125,660 natural history specimens, mostly of insects though also thousands of molluscs, birds, mammals and reptiles. The work was illustrated with engravings, based on Wallace's observations and collection, by the leading illustrators Thomas Baines, Walter Hood Fitch, John Gerrard Keulemans, E. W. Robinson, Joseph Wolf and T. W. Wood.‎