8vo. 238pp. Original publisher's green cloth, lettered in blue, pictorial dustwrapper. A trifle cocked, slight surface loss to head of spine and lower board, dustwrapper rubbed, spine panel chipped and sunned. Endpapers lightly browned. Presentation copy, inked ownership inscription to recto of FFEP: 'With all best wishes / from / Gerald Durrell / 1953'.

The first edition of British naturalist Gerald Durrell's (1925-1995) first published work; a chronicle of a six-month collecting trip, from December 1947 to August 1948, to the West African colony of British Cameroon that Durrell made with aviculturist and ornithologist John Yealland.