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Botany volume only. Includes 61 lithographed botanical plates; 75 steel-engraved specimen plates & 1 view of cacti (4to), half brown morocco and cloth, spine gilt-lettered. First Edition.

Report on government explorations in the Southwest, noteworthy for the striking illustrations as well as the text, and with an important map. Wagner-Camp notes that "Emory's writing style and system of organization lacks the quality of John C. Fremont, but the scientific content of the Report is indeed comparable to Fremont's earlier Narrative, according to William H. Goetzmann. Although Emory had been a key member of the Commission ever since its beginning, his narrative of his own adventures is sketchy and inadequate, and reflects in it some of his animosity toward John Bartlett. Emory's own contribution to the Report is cartographic; as the Commission's chief astronomer, he had made most of the several thousand observations which were incorporated into the maps...." The present volume contains the parts on botany (general botany by John Torrey and cacti by George Engelmann). Howes E146; Wagner-Camp 291.