Book of Monsters de Fairchild, David & Marian - 1914

Washington: National Geographic Society, 1914. Illustrated with black and white photographic plates throughout, large octavo, pp 266, some age-toning throughout, page 145 and the plate overleaf torn without loss, some thumbing and creaseing to the fore-edges throughout, the title page and the following page creased and foxed, traces of removed bookplates on the front and rear endpapers, red cloth with pictorial inlay, rubbed and a bit worn, the corners a little worn, lacking a small piece at the spine head. With the stamp of the entomologist Charles Edgar Pratt on the endpaper. RARE. Extremely enlarged photographs of spiders and insects. [David Grandison Fairchild was an American botanist and plant explorer. Fairchild was responsible for the introduction of more than 200,000 exotic plants and varieties of established crops into the United States, including soybeans, pistachios, mangos, nectarines, dates, bamboos, and flowering cherries. Certain varieties of wheat, cotton, and rice became especially economically important. His wife was Marian Bell, the younger daughter of Alexander Graham Bell. This was his first book.]. First Edition. Pictorial Cloth. Fair.