Nissen ZBI 4754; Spence 1198; Renard 1596 (Vols. 1 & 2). In 1877, Wyville Thomson had published an initial account - The Voyage of the Challenger - of the successful oceanographic expedition undertaken by the British Government to explore the physical, chemical, geological and biological conditions of the great ocean basins. A projected fuller account was interrupted by Wyville Thomson's death, but completed by John Murray and others. This fuller account appeared as these "Narrative" volumes of the extensive series of reports - over 50 volumes in all. The "Narrative" itself comprises this first volume in two parts which is stunningly illustrated with photographic and chromolithographic plates of islands, geological features, portraits of natives and their weapons, Antarctic ice, together with numerous maps of the regions visited. (Volume II, not offered here, had appeared in 1882, and contained abstracts, as per Wyville Thomson's original intentions, of the magnetical and meteorological observations of the voyage, together with appendices by P.G. Tait and A. Renard.) An impressively produced, important work.