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BLANFORD, William Thomas.
Observations on the Geology and Zoology of Abyssinia,
made during the Progress of the British Expedition to that Country in 1867-68.
First edition. Educated at the Royal School of Mines and the Bergakademie in Freiberg, Blanford joined the Geological Survey of India in 1854. "Late in 1867 he was attached to the Abyssinian expedition and accompanied the troops to Magdala, making large collections, both geological and zoological. Work on these occupied much time after his return to India in October 1868, and brought him to England on six months' service leave; the outcome was his valuable book, Observations on the Geology and the Zoology of Abyssinia" (DNB) In 1871 he was back in India and began his most important surveying appointment, the India-Persia Boundary Commission. In connection with this work he visited Baluchistan, Tehran, the Alborz mountains, and the Caspian Sea. He returned to England through Russia and Moscow in September 1872. The rigours of this survey left him weakened in health, he eventually retired in 1882 and settled in London. He died in 1905. A superior copy.
Octavo. Original green sand-grained cloth, title gilt to the spine, blind panels to the boards, invisible green surface-paper endpapers. Folding tinted lithographic frontispiece, and 8 other lithographic plates, 6 of them hand-coloured ornithological studies transferred to stone by Keulemans from his own drawings, and printed and coloured by Trap of Leiden, also a folding coloured lithographic geological map, 4 wood-engraved plates and a number of illustrative vignettes to the text. Small mark towards the tail of the spine, ?from the removal of a press-mark label, slight traces of the successful lifting of a bookplate from the front pastedown, some scattered foxing, but overall an excellent, unopened copy.
