[NEW GUINEA] La Nouvelle-Guinée : IIIe notice : le fleuve Augusta

Paris : Imprimé pour l’auteur, Mars 1887. Large octavo (235 x 180 mm), original printed stiff wrappers (unevenly sunned, old wet stamp of the Royal Society of Edinburgh to front); pp viii, [1 blank], 16, with a folding colour map at rear; text in French; internally fine, a very good copy.

A work on the Sepik River (Kaiserin Augusta-Fluß in German), describing its recent discovery and early exploration (1885-6).

Roland Napoléon Bonaparte, 6th Prince of Canino and Musignano (1858-1924), had a deep interest in anthropology and was a keen collector of ethnographic artefacts and photographs of indigenous peoples. He should probably be considered as more than a mere dilettante; indeed, he has been referred to as “the scientist prince”. In 1884 took part in a scientific expedition that photographed and anatomically measured the Sami inhabitants of Northern Norway.