8vo. 2pp. and 16pp. publisher's advertisements. Tinted lithographed frontispiece, 8 plates, engraved map, folding letterpress table. Original brown cloth decorated in gilt and blind (spine lightly sunned, fore-corners bumped, front endpapers renewed, font hinge starting); folding case. Provenance: Major-General Sir Percy Zachariah Cox (1864-1937), a distinguished British colonial administrator known for his significant contributions to British imperial interests in the Middle East including overseeing the establishment of the Iraqi state and appointment of King Faisal I (bookplate).

FIRST EDITION, describing Wallace's expedition to the Amazon which solidified his reputation as a naturalist. Wallace credits American naturalist William H. Edwards, who explored the lower Amazon as far as Manaus in 1846, for influencing him to explore the same region and collect Natural History samples. On his return to England in 1853, a ship fire destroyed his specimen collections, but his drawings and notes were saved. He used those notes to compile this work, and a work about palm trees in the Amazon, published in the same year.