A vanishingly rare title (a presentation copy) on Central Asia, published in Calcutta in 1880 Tribes of the Hindoo Koosh, by Major J. Biddulph, B.S.C., Political Officer at Gilgit. Pub. Calcutta, Office of the Superintendent of Government Printing, 1880. First edition. Tall octavo, original green cloth with gilt title and dagger to the front board, gilt title and stylings to the spine, the gilt of the author's name rubbed. 164 pp with a further 169 pp of appendices. Frontispiece, four tables (three folding), five plates, illustrations within text. Folding map in front pocket. The cloth is in VG+ condition, with a couple of small, insignificant marks and tiny dings to the edges. The endpapers and a few pages at the front and back have spots of splashy foxing, but the interior pages are clean. Bookplate of 'Selborne' to the pastedown (Roundell Palmer [1812-1895], 1st Earl of Selborne, lawyer and politician). A presentation copy, 'With the author's compliments' to the front free endpaper. In addition, there is a second inscription from a 'David Tweedie from Blackmoor House Library' dated 'Christmas 1972.' There is a tiny shelf mark associated with the library at Blackmoor House (Lord Selborne's country seat) to the pastedown. Biddulph, [1840-1921] was a soldier and naturalist who was posted to Gilgit in the North West of Kashmir in 1877. While there, he travelled and spoke with people familiar with the region of the Kush, the mountain chain which stretches from Afghanistan into what is now Pakistan and Tajikistan. The substantial appendices in the book record the various dialects of the region. The information he gathered, much of it new, helped establish the British as a political presence here. The ethnographic material covers everything from dancing, burial customs, slavery, systems of governance, weapons, religious festivals and much else. An important title in the politics of British involvement in Central Asia in the late Victorian era, and one which rarely appears at auction, never mind general commerce.