Island Life Alfred Russel Wallace

First edition, published by Macmillan in 1880. Bassett Maguire's copy, with his bookplate to the front pastedown. Maguire was head curator at the New York Botanical Garden and led expeditions to the remote regions of the Guyana Highlands in north east South America. He was the first in science to discover and name the Cerro de la Neblina region, or Mountains of The Clouds, a remote mountain region bordering the Amazon, rich with an incredibly diverse range of flora and fauna. His bookplate features an illustration of the area. Original cloth covers, with later green cloth repairs to the edges, not quite colour matching, brown endpapers, inner hinges strengthened or repaired with white paper fibres, also not colour matching, but the repairs remain strong and secure. Maguire's bookplate is pasted partly over another bookplate for William Miller Christy, another name in ink to the reverse of pastedown, some partly erased pencil marks to the half title, pages generally clean, the maps and opposing pages foxed, two pages with very minor marginal notes, another two or three with very minor marginal pencil notes, one page with some loss to the margin. Overall good condition with repairs, and an interesting previous owner.