Book of the Week: Life in Coral

One such expedition, the Challenger Expedition of 1872-1876, served to help “lay the foundation for oceanography.” The expedition, leaving from Portsmouth, England, on the 21^st of December, 1872, traversed over 68,000 nautical miles during its exploration. The findings were documented in the publication Report of the Exploring Voyage of the H.M.S. Challenger during the years 1873-1876. This publication, which cataloged over 4,000 new species, provided readers not only with in-depth text describing the findings from the voyage, but also a myriad of beautifully illustrated plates to correspond with these findings.

A portion of this publication, Report on the Reef-Corals collected by H.M.S. Challenger during the years 1873-76, served as a report detailing the reef corals collected during the Challenger Expedition (Plate II from this book is pictured here). In recent news, on April 4, 2009, the Manchester Museum unveiled the Manchester Gallery, which includes an exhibit showcasing a collection of specimens gathered during the Challenger Expedition.

To see more books from the Challenger Expedition, click here.

To view this week’s book of the week, Report on the Reef-Corals collected by H.M.S. Challenger during the years 1873-76 (1886) by John J. Quelch, contributed by the Smithsonian, click here.