The five volumes of "The Zoology of the Voyage of H.M.S. Beagle" were published between 1839 and 1843 in small runs for distribution to natural history museums and scholarly institutions.   Few have ever come up for sale since.

The Library of Congress has one of the originals.   Harvard University, with one of the largest and oldest libraries in the world, has two copies of the original.   There is no copy of the original in North Carolina.

Since 1968, the five-volume series has been reprinted three times in limited editions (including once in smaller format).   Even these reprints now cost $400 to $1500.   Duke has a copy of one of these reprints, but UNC does not.

In 1992 a facsimile of the original was published on CD-ROM (along with facsimiles of all of Darwin's other publications).   UNC Libraries has one of these CD-ROMS (check the catalog for "Zoology of the Voyage ...").

The colored illustrations of Darwin's finches that we have looked at in class are Gould's illustrations for the volume on "Birds" in the "Zoology of the Voyage ..."   They remain today the best available illustrations of Darwin's finches!