A Naturalist's Note-Book in China.

Shanghai: North-China Daily News & Herald, Ltd,, 1925. A rare jacket from 1920s Shanghai First edition, first printing, of this description of Chinese fish, amphibians, and reptiles. Because of China's climate and unsettled domestic political situation, fine copies of jackets from the inter-war period are seldom encountered. A leading naturalist of his day, Arthur de Carle Sowerby (1885-1954) was born in Taiyuan, Shanxi, to a Baptist missionary. In the early 20th century, he began collecting specimens for Taiyuan's museum of natural history and subsequently joined the zoological Bedford expedition in 1906. Having served with the Chinese Labour Corps during the First World War, he returned to China and settled in Shanghai, where he founded the China Journal of Science and Arts. Two chapters discuss the blue sheep of Gansu and the former imperial hunting grounds. In the same decade as he published this account, Sowerby also released his three-volume The Naturalist in Manchuria (1922-30). Tall octavo. With half-tone frontispiece showing 5-foot salamander, 19 half-tone plates, sketches by author in text. Original pale yellow cloth, spine and front cover lettered and with vignettes in brown. With dust jacket. Cloth bright, spine ends and tips bumped, mild smoke odour to contents; jacket flaps without price as issued, lightly toned, couple of nicks: a near-fine copy in fine jacket. Czech, p. 196.