The Botany of the Antarctic Voyage of H.M. Discovery Ships Erebus and Terror in the Years 1839 - 1843

Weinheim: J. Cramer, 1966. Facsimile reprint. Three vols thick octavo, + one volume folio, pp xiv, 574; xl, 312, 378; cxxviii, 360, 422; + 528 plain illustrations, one small mark to the fore-edge of Volume III, otherwise a very good clean set weighing over 7 kilos before packing. EXTREMELY SCARCE [The Ross expedition was a voyage of scientific exploration of the Antarctic in 1839 to 1843, led by James Clark Ross, with two unusually strong warships, HMS Erebus and HMS Terror. It explored what is now called the Ross Sea and discovered the Ross Ice Shelf. On the expedition, Ross discovered the Transantarctic Mountains and the volcanoes Erebus and Terror, named after his ships. The Joseph Dalton Hooker made his name on the expedition. The expedition inferred the position of the South Magnetic Pole, and made substantial observations of the zoology and botany of the region. The expedition was the last major voyage of exploration made wholly under sail. Among the expedition's biological discoveries was the Ross seal, a species confined to the pack ice of Antarctica. Hooker's contribution totalled six volumes (parts III and IV each being in two volumes), covered about 3000 species, and contained over 500 plates figuring in all 1095 of the species described. It was throughout "splendidly" illustrated by Walter Hood Fitch. Hooker gave Charles Darwin a copy of the first part of the Flora; Darwin thanked him, and agreed in November 1845 that the geographical distribution of organisms would be "the key which will unlock the mystery of species".]. Cloth. Very Good.