An Account of the Alcyonarians collected by the Royal Indian Marine Survey Ship Investigator in the Indian Ocean. II. The Alcyonarians of the Littoral Area

  • Calcutta: Trustees of the Indian Museum, 1909
By Thomson, J. Arthur, Simpson, J.J. and Henderson, W.D.
Calcutta: Trustees of the Indian Museum, 1909. First edition. 1909

ILLUSTRATED ACCOUNT OF CORALS COLLECTED IN THE INDIAN OCEAN, WITH LARGE FINE LITHOGRAPHED PLATES.

13 inches tall hardcover, black pebbled cloth binding with marbled boards, rebacked, preserving original paper title label, xviii, 319 pp, 77 text figures, large folding table, 9 fine lithographed plates with tissue guards and facing descriptive text (2 colored); small institutional handstamp to bottom corner of front endpaper, browning to endpapers, age-toning to edges of pages, plates fine; very good. In custom archival mylar cover.

JOHN ARTHUR THOMSON (1861 - 1933) studied natural history at the University of Edinburgh graduating with an MA in 1880. He had already established a reputation as a worthy scientist within his first years and in 1887, aged 25, he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. He taught at the Royal Veterinary College from 1893 until 1899 then University of Aberdeen from 1899 until 1930 as Regius Professor of Natural History, the year he was knighted. His popular works sought to reconcile science and religion. Thomson's Outline of Science, published in 1922, sold more than one hundred thousand copies in five years.

JAMES JENKINS SIMPSON (1881 - 1936) was a marine biologist and Carnegie Research Scholar and Fellow at Aberdeen. He joined the British Indian government to study pearl oyster fisheries in southern Burma in 1906 and then worked in East Africa with the Nyassa Company.

THE ALCYONARIA are colonial polyps including the blue coral, soft corals, sea pens, and gorgonians (sea fans and sea whips) within three orders: Alcyonacea, Helioporacea, and Pennatulacea. These organisms have an internal skeleton secreted by mesoglea and polyps with eight tentacles and eight mesentaries. As with all Cnidarians these organisms have a complex life cycle including a motile phase when they are considered plankton and later characteristic sessile phase.

Details

Title

An Account of the Alcyonarians collected by the Royal Indian Marine Survey Ship Investigator in the Indian Ocean. II. The Alcyonarians of the Littoral Area

Author

Thomson, J. Arthur, Simpson, J.J. and Henderson, W.D.

Condition

Unknown

Publisher

Trustees of the Indian Museum: Calcutta

Date

1909

Edition

First edition


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