This proof signed by Leveillé was made from a daguerreotype by the Bisson brothers and is an early attempt to reproduce for publication the material collected during French explorer Jules Sébastien César Dumont d’Urville’s (1790-1842) 1837-1840 voyage through the Pacific and the Antarctic circle on board the ‘Astrolabe’ and the ‘Zélée’.  Ultimately realized in the publication, Voyage au Pôle Sud et dans L’Océanie. the lithograph depicts a life cast of a Torres Strait Islander produced by Pierre-Marie Alexandre Dumoutier (1797-1871), an anatomist and phrenologist who travelled with the expedition. Dumoutier was commissioned by Dumont d’Urville to collect casts of the indigenous populations of each site visited over the course of the voyage. The life casts were used to substantiate Dumont d’Urville’s belief in a stratified racial hierarchy among the inhabitants of the South Pacific region.