London, Robert Hardwicke (for The Ray Society), 1868. Folio (35.0 x 25.6 cm). Title page, 15 pp.; 38 fine engraved plates of which 11 much larger, folded. Contemporary pebbled half morocco over gilt-bordered marbled boards. Spine with five raised, gilt-ornamented bands and gilt title. Marbled endpapers. Top edge gilt.

The rare atlas. In 1866-1867 two octavo text volumes were published too. These are far more common. The atlas depicts, for instance, Flindersia australis and Eupomatia laurina from Flinders' Voyage to Terra Australis; Rafflesia Arnoldi, Hydnora Africana, and so on. All finely engraved. Robert Brown (1773-1858) was a British botanist, who travelled with Flinders to Australia. He was a librarian to Banks and the Linnean Society, keeper of botany at the British Museum and one of the most versatile botanists of the first half of the 19th century. Provenance: an arboreal bookplate of Henry B. H. Beaufoy, FRS "Sub tegmine fagi" on the front pastedown, and a pictorial bookplate of University of Aberdeen, Tarradale House 1960 "Impavido Pectore" on the front free endpaper recto. The first is rather peculiar, as the philanthropist, book collector and fellow of The Royal Society Henry Benjamin Hanbury Beaufoy, who was born in 1786, died in 1851. Binding worn, weak bump to spine top, otherwise a very good, clean copy. Stafleu and Cowan, 838.