Hodgson, William B.; Memoir on the Megatherium and other Extinct Gigantic Quadrupeds of the Coast of Georgia with observations on its Geologic Features. New York, 1846. Octavo, pp. vi., 47, folded map, section, engraved plate.

The work is complete and in an archival folder. The binding is tight and clean. The text has a light damp stain to the lower third of the plates. This can be seen on the image. Over all in good condition.
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Hodgson (1801-1871); was born in, in Georgetown, District of Columbia. He never attended college, and his formal education was limited to studies in Georgetown, principally under the Reverend James Carnahan, a future president of the College of New Jersey (later Princeton University). While in Georgetown he developed a friendship with Francis Scott Key. 
Hodgson had an unusual facility for foreign languages and ultimately would master thirteen of them, including Hebrew and Sanskrit. Although he had never studied at Princeton, the college conferred upon him an honorary degree in 1824. 
As a young man Hodgson’s talent for languages attracted the attention of  Henry Clay, then a member of the U.S. Congress, who offered him a position in U.S. State Department. This began an overseas career which began when Clay became secretary of state under President John Quincy Adams and assigned Hodgson to the Barbary States of northern Africa to receive further linguistic training and to assist the consul general at Algiers in Algeria. 
Upon his return to America, Hodgson and his bride settled in Savannah, Georgia where he became involved in the intellectual life of the city. 
Hodgson's scholarly work included studies in the physical sciences, among them an 1843 paper to the National Institute in Washington on the organic remains and geology of the Georgia coast. When the British geologist, Sir Charles Lyell visited Savannah in December 1845, Hodgson accompanied him on an excursion to Skidaway Island which Lyell later described in his work “A Second Visit to the United States”. Lyell also observed vertebrate fossils obtained by Hodgson which were discovered by the collector Dr. I. C. Habersham of Savannah. The results of the study were originally presented as a lecture before the National Institute in Washington. At the urging of Lyell, Hodgson published an expanded version of that lecture in his work “Memoir on the Megatherium”.