The birds of Siberia

London: John Murray, 1901. FIRST EDITION. Folding map and woodcut illustrations. Original pictorial brown cloth, gilt lettering on spine and front cover, cloth starting along front hinge; some browning and minor foxing to preliminary leaves, otherwise a very clean copy from the Library of James M. Dolan Jr., former head curator and director of collections at the Zoological Society of San Diego and with the contemporary ownership signature of W.R. Allen on the fly-leaf. First edition of the account of Seebohm’s two monumental expeditions to Siberia in 1875 and 1877, first published separately in 1880 and in 1882, and here combined into one volume. The main purpose of Seebohm’s work was to study the classification and geographical distribution of the 110 species of birds he identified in Siberia. His observations revealed striking geographic differences in plumage and size from species he was familiar with in Europe. The author discovered that the switch from winter to summer in Siberia is announced by the northward sweep of vast numbers of migrant shorebirds, landbirds and raptors.
Seebohm (1832-1895) settled in Sheffield as a manufacturer of steel, but most of his time was devoted to ornithology. He visited Southern Europe and South Africa to study European birds in their winter quarters and to collect materials for the present work. He was a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society and of the Linnean Society.