Garden Islands of the Great East. Collecting Seeds from the Philippines and Netherlands India in the Junk "Cheng Ho' by Fairchild, David (1869-1954) - 1943

New York:, 1943: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1943. First Edition, First Printing. Hardcover. Very Good/No Jacket. First Edition, First Printing with A present.

Travels throughout the Pacific islands the year before the attack on Pearl Harbor by Japanese forces.

Plum colored cloth with silver stamped gilt titles. Decorated endpages with a relief map; xiv, 239 pages with an index; illustrated with numerous black/white photographs; Includes bibliographical references. The bindings are tight and square. Text clean, light even toning. Moderate shelf handling wear. Spine has sun-fading. David Fairchild was responsible for the introduction of more than 200,000 exotic plants and varieties of established crops into the United States, including soybeans, pistachios, mangos, nectarines, dates, bamboos, and flowering cherries.

The junk had been built in Hong Kong especially for Fairchild's expedition it had a modern botanical laboratory below decks by an American explorer and scientific patron named Anne Archbold. It was modeled on a 15th-century Chinese junk, was brightly painted, and decorated.

Ref: Science Vol 99, 1944; NYT Aug 26, 1990