Full tan leather binding by Bickers & Son, London. black title plate, raised banding with gilt decoration and lettering on the spine. Gilt bird and edge line on both boards. red marbled endpapers. all edges marbled.

John George Wood, or Rev J. G. Wood, (21 July 1827 – 3 March 1889), was an English writer who popularised natural history with his writings.

Wood was a prolific and successful natural history writer, though rather as a populariser than as a scientist. For example, his book Common objects of the country sold 100,000 copies in a week. Among his works are Common Objects of the Microscope; Illustrated Natural History (1853); Animal Traits and Characteristics (1860); Common Objects of the Sea Shore (1857); The Uncivilized Races, or Natural History of Man (1868) (to which Mark Twain refers in his humorous work Roughing It); Out of Doors  (1874) (a book that was quoted by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle in his Sherlock Holmes story “The Adventure of the Lion’s Mane”); Field Naturalist’s Handbook (with T. Wood) (1879–80); books on gymnastics and sport; and an edition of Gilbert White’s Natural History of Selborne. He also edited The Boys Own Magazine.

Wood died at Coventry on 3 March 1889.