[WHITE, Captain Samuel Albert] TATE, Ralph

A Handbook of the Flora of Extratropical South Australia, containing the Flowering Plants and Ferns [heavily annotated by Captain S.A. White]

Adelaide, Education Department, 1890.

Octavo, originally viii, 303 pages plus a map: this copy lacks the map, the title leaf and its conjugate (pages i-ii and vii-viii), and the last leaf (303-4, last page blank).

Original full black roan lettered in gilt on the front cover; leather slightly rubbed and bumped; last leaf a little torn; signs of age and use; overall, a very good copy. We presume this is a publisher's deluxe or presentation binding; the standard binding is grey cloth with a paper title-label on the front cover.

Samuel Albert White (1870-1954), ornithologist and conservationist: 'His most arduous and important work as a naturalist occurred when he collaborated with Gregory Mathews on "The Birds of Australia" (London, 1910-27). To this end, White mounted major collecting expeditions, often accompanied by his wife. He travelled with camels to Alice Springs and beyond (1913), with a government team to the Musgrave and Everard ranges (1914), and with the South Australian Museum expedition to Cooper Creek (1916); he also went to the Nullarbor Plains (1917-18), with Sir Edgeworth David and Professor Walter Howchin to the Finke River (1921), and in 1922 led the great adventure from Adelaide to Darwin and back, using three Dort motor cars supplied and serviced by Adelaide mechanics Cyril and Murray Aunger.

White's outstanding achievement lay in completing an ornithological survey of the whole of South Australia and much of the Northern Territory. He was the first European to see several species and regarded the Princess Alexandra parrot as the world's most beautiful bird. A keen conservationist, he was a central figure in the declaration of national parks in the State and was a noted spokesman on insects, birds and botany' ('Australian Dictionary of Biography').

In this copy of the book, 'A Classified List of the Native Species' (pages 204-272) is extensively annotated in ink in what we know to be the hand of Captain S.A. White; there are slight annotations or emphases on numerous other pages. Although his name does not appear anywhere in the volume, we purchased this item (among many others) direct from the White family home 'Weetunga' at Fulham a couple of decades ago. Loosely inserted is a ticket to an 'Exhibition of Wild Flowers' by the Field Naturalists' Section of the Royal Society of SA, annotated on the verso by White; undated, but 1920s.

Item #141871

Price (AUD): $400.00
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