The hand-coloured aquatint frontispiece in the 1825 book, The Voyager's companion, or shell collector's guide, by British mineralogist John Mawe (1764-1829), from the Douglas Stewart Fine Books , Melbourne, latest acquisitions list, $4500. One bird is clearly a noisy Australian Cockatoo , another could be a Rosella.
Information supplied by the bookshop says the book was the first guide to shell collecting , with the earliest direct references to New Holland and the South Seas.
Also included were instructions not only on how to find shells but how to preserve skins of animals and best methods for collecting insects and anything else of interest in distant voyages.
The first unillustrated edition was printed and sold by the author in 1804 , only one surviving copy known to exist, in the NSW State Library , published under the title A short treatise addressed to gentlemen visiting the South Seas and all foreign countries : more particularly to Commanders , and captains of ships and gentlemen residing on shore with a view to encourage the collecting of natural history .
Mawe had an early naval career and as a major dealer in minerals travelled to the gold and diamond districts of Brazil about which he wrote an extensive book, a great read , a new edition published in 1812 .
The book is available on the Darwin Online website , part of the Beagle Library project supported by a Singapore Ministry of Education Academic Research Fund Tier 1 grant, Charles Darwin University and the Charles Darwin University Foundation, Northern Territory, Australia.
Mawe's interest in conchology became such that he bought for a large sum the collection of Betsy Bligh , widow of Captain William Bligh of the Bounty , who brought back shells for her from his voyages.
The preface to a catalogue for the proposed auction of the Bligh shell collection read : " To any voyager fond of this beautiful branch of Natural History, or to any collector resident on their shores , the South Seas offer a fine harvest ; but the late Admiral Bligh had, from the situations in which his professional eminence placed him , the best opportunities of procuring whatever was most valuable and rare, from a field proverbially rich."
The above rare offering is an 1825 fourth edition , ex the USA Library of Congress, which includes illustrations of shells and fauna found in the farthest parts of the world, including the South Seas, with shells of the Sandwich Islands (Hawaii), the Marquesas and Society Islands, Otaheite and New Zealand all discussed in the text.
The illustration at the top is thought to have been drawn by Sarah Mawe, who became known as MIneralogist to Her Majesty after the death of her husband.
The collecting of shells in New Holland is discussed across three pages: ‘Van Diemen’s Land (Tasmania) offers a vast field to the naturalist, particularly to the conchologist, zoologist and entomologist, who would be amply remunerated for whatever they might collect … ‘; there is further discussion of rare shells found by two boys on a whaling ship in Western Port.
(Pacific . Collecting . Shells. )