Detail from cover

Franz Thonner was an Austrian botanist who wrote a number of keys to genera and families of flowering plants. He was born in 1863 and died in 1928. He made trips to the Congo to study botany. (New Phytologist, v 93, 1983) In 1896 he accomplished an important journey through the Congo basin, described in Im Afrikanischem Urwald. Twelve years later he returned to Africa to continue his studies. His health failed him upon this journey and he was forced to return home sooner than he wanted. Besides his botanical collections, he had also mapped the route between Mandungu and Yakoma, and made numerous meteorological observations, as well as obtaining vocabularies of twenty dialects. (Journal of the African Society, 1911)

This volume was printed in Berlin in 1898. From a pencil inscription on the interior we learn that it was acquired by the Harvard Botany Libraries in September of 1907. It is printed in German, and contains beautiful illustrations as well as 86 stunning photographs taken by the author depicting the people of Africa, their homes, lives, and tools.