COVER
AT FIRST glance the little red botany textbook, published in 1908, seems unremarkable. But this particular copy tells a more dramatic story than the authors, Joseph W Oliver and W B Grove, ever intended.
The book is water damaged. A handwritten note on the first page ruefully attributes this to ‘the rain and trench water that soaked everything’. And on the inside cover, in different handwriting, is the owner’s name, Pioneer A C Stephen; the date, June 1916; and a note that it had been carried through an unclear location.