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Bolus, Harry : Icones Orchidearum Austro-Africanarum Extra-tropicarum; or, Figures, with Descriptions, of Extra-tropical South African Orchids [Orchids of South Africa]

(London: William Wesley & Son, 1896, 1911, 1913)

Cover title: Orchids of South Africa. Three royal 8vo volumes (Volume I, Part II, Volume II, and Volume III); original green cloth, lettered in gilts on spine and upper cover; all volumes unpaginated; a total of 250 partially coloured lithographic plates, with accompanying descriptions. To complete the set, a monochrome facsimile of the first part of Volume I, initially issued in 1893 by Wesley and Juta, is supplied (in smaller octavo format), with a cloth binding approximating that of the other three books, and lettered in gilt on spine, with black endpapers as in the other volumes. This book has a further fifty plates, here reproduced in monochrome. In the case of the three original volumes: A little light wear and stippling to cloth; some foxing to edges, sporadic, moderate foxing elsewhere; the leaves of Volume I, Part II, have been expertly re-set and stitched, owing to the disintegration of the earlier gutta-percha binding. This volume also has new black endpapers, in keeping with the style of the other volumes. A very good set of this celebrated work with its beautiful illustrations, the first book of the two-part Volume One also provided, in facsimile. (Mendelssohn I, p. 149; SABIB 1, p. 237; Hosken, p. 21) "It was about the time of his first trip to Kew that Bolus began to take a special interest in the Orchidaceae. Although several other botanical interests took up much of his time, he retained a particular interest in orchids until his death. His first publications on Orchidaceae appeared in 1882, when, besides his 'Notes on some Cape orchids', he published 'A list of published species of Cape orchideae', prepared largely during a visit to Kew in 1881. He published The orchids of the Cape Peninsula in 1888, many of the 102 species which he described being illustrated with partly-coloured plates, which he prepared himself. This work was followed in 1893 by the first volume of his Icones orchidearum Austro-Africanarum extra-tropicarum. Although he worked on two volumes, the second did not appear until just after his death in 1911. A third volume was edited and completed by Miss H. M. L. Kensit, with nine extra plates painted by his son, Frank Bolus (1870-1945), and published in London in 1913." - DSAB I, p. 90.

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