Darwin and the Beagle

North Salem, NY: The Adventure Library, 2000 Hard cover, Octavo (5 ½" x 8 ⅜"). pp xv [3] 202 [4]. In half buckram with paper-covered boards featuring a ship at anchor, gilt titles to spine on dark green printed labels, and end papers featuring a tropical landscape with exotic animals. Includes publisher's letter to subscribers. With illustrations and color plates. Condition: Fine. *** A wonderfully illustrated account of Charles Darwin's famous voyage to discover the process of evolution. The journey aboard the HMS Beagle lasted five years, from 1831 to 1836, and took Darwin to South America, Tahiti, the Galápagos Islands, and Australia. He contracted malaria (and was treated using various local remedies), was nearly stranded ashore in Montevideo, collected fossils, hunted kangaroo, and got thoroughly homesick (the trip had been planned to take just two years). The captain of the Beagle, Robert FitzRoy, spent the trip conducting geological surveys for the British Admiralty. Both FitzRoy and Darwin published accounts of the voyage, although FitzRoy later had difficulty reconciling their findings with his religious beliefs. *** The Adventure Library was a series of 30 books sold by subscription between 1994 and 2003. The series was the brainchild of Edward Livermore Burlingame, an American publishing executive, who put up his own money to kickstart the company. He had been looking for something new to accomplish, and thought that the classic works of exploration were being overlooked by the reading public, because there were no new editions. . First Edition Thus. Hard Cover. Fine.