A Voyage to Senegal, the Isle of Goree, and the River Gambia.

The important travel work of Michel Adanson's (1727-1806) famous botanical exploits in Senegal, during which he collected tens of thousands of botanical and animal specimens.

Contains wealthy descriptions of the natural history of St Louis, Gore Island, Podor, and the Gambia River, as well as Tenerife and Fayal, as well as describing much of the character of Senegal. This work was supposed to accompany his giant thesis on plants which would establish his own taxonomical classification system different to that of Linnaeus. His contemporaries mocked his ideas but they heavily influenced Lamarck and early evolutionary thinking, being one of the first to use the term 'mutations' in an article in 1769.

First edition in English; 8vo (22 x 13.5 cm); folding map as frontispiece with small tear repaired, mottling to last section of text and final page with margins repaired; contemporary speckled calf, rebacked with fresh endpapers, gilt roll border to boards, gilt lettering to spine in six compartments, a little wear to extremities, a very good sound copy; xiii, [1], 337, [1] pp.

Cox I 383; cf. Gay 2883.