The Australian Race. Its Origin, Languages, Customs, Place of Landing in Australia, and the Routes by which it spread itself over that Continent... In Four Volumes
Melbourne, Government Printer, 1886, 1886, 1887 and 1887.
Octavo, three volumes (text) and elephant folio (volume of comparative languages), xx, 425; vi, 501; and x, 710 pages with a diagram, a folding leaf, and several tables plus a map and 17 plates (2 unlisted), plus the 'atlas' of comparative languages, containing 45 pages and a large folding colour map of Australia in an endpocket (places marked include those where circumcision and 'The Terrible Rite' [sub-incision] were practised).
Original blind-stamped purple cloth (the three text volumes) and later binder's cloth (the atlas); spines of the first two text volumes faded to brown; spine of the first volume slightly worn at the extremities, with a small paper label removed (leaving an unfaded patch); cloth on the second volume slightly marked and a little bumped; a very good set (the last two volumes are in excellent condition).
Accounts (but primarily vocabularies) of over 200 tribes that 'have been drawn up by the writer from replies sent by his correspondents to a series of questions circulated in print'. Contributors are named; well-known figures include Foelsche, Gason, Gillen, Howitt, Salvado and numerous early explorers. The atlas contains comparative lists of 63 words from 197 tribes; it is often lacking from the set. Loosely inserted in the endpocket is a later reproduction of a large folding map by Brough Smyth ('Map showing approximately some of the areas occupied by the Aboriginal Tribes of Victoria'). [4 items].
Item #109233
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