Wild Life of the World by Richard Lydekker, 1916, with dust-wrappers.
 
The full title is Wild Life of the World. A Descriptive Survey of the Geographical Distribution of Animals. This was published by Warne & Co. While the books are undated they are definitely a first edition set from 1916.
 
These are rare first editions with dust-wrappers. The books are all in green cloth which because of the wrappers have near-fine cloth covers. All the dust-wrappers have had chips and some internal repair work in particular with tape. Volume 3 has stripes across the wrapper from a previous internal protective paper which affected the wrapper but not the book. All 3 have tipped-in pictures of animals related to  a region that particular animal is in. The tipped-in pictures are in excellent condition with no curling of the edges. The covers have minimal signs of wear with very bright gilt lettering and an illustration.
 
The books show browning to the text block edges, some off-setting to the blanks and some light scattered foxing only. The colour illustrations are bright and clean. There are a large number of stunning black and white   (over 600 engavings) and colour illustrations (120) per volume. Volume 1 has a gift inscription on the front paste-down. Page135 of volume 2 has an old, small tape repair at the bottom of the page. The bindings are tight. I have put all the dust-wrappers in protective non-adhesive polypropylene covers with paper backings to further preserve them.
 
The illustrations were done by Friedrich Wilhelm Kuhnert. They are an absolute feature of the books because of their quality and sheer number.