DESCRIPTION OF THE SPAR CAVE, LATELY DISCOVERED IN THE ISLE OF SKYE, WITH SOME GEOLOGICAL REMARKS TO THAT ISLAND. To Which is Subjoined, The Mermaid, A Poem.

First edition, first printing. Signed by the author with an inscription. Contemporary burgundy cloth with gilt titles to the spine. Top edge burgundy. A very good copy, the binding square and firm, the corners and spine tips a little rubbed and bumped. With the bookplate of the Scottish ornithologist and naturalist John Alexander Harvie-Brown to the front pastedown and a few spots and marks throughout, the contents are otherwise clean and without previous owners' stamps or inscriptions.

Inscribed by Kenneth Macleay in sepia ink on the verso of the dedication page, "To John Malcolm Esq / With best respect / from the Author". A description of the impressive Spar Cave on the Isle of Skye by the physician and antiquarian Kenneth Macleay, father of the miniature painter Kenneth Macleay the younger. Including the poem 'The Mermaid' by the Scottish poet John Leydon. Spar Cave became a popular tourist destination in the 19th century, attracting many famous and literary visitors. It was again connected with mermaids when Walter Scott, who was a close friend of John Leydon, wrote of a mermaid bathing in a pool in Spar Cave in his 1815 poem 'The Lord of the Isles', following his visit to the cave in 1814.