2 vols, 8vo (224 x 136 mm), pp viii 411 [1] 32 [advertisements dated April 1867]; viii 486 [2, advertisements, dated February 1868], with 43 wood engravings in text; uncut, a fine copy in original publisher’s cloth, bright and unfaded, small nick in lower joint of first vol, small stain to top corner of lower cover of second vol. £2750
First edition, first issue of ‘the only section of Darwin’s big book on the origin of species which was printed in his lifetime and corresponding to its first two intended chapters’ (Freeman). This work is notable not only for Darwin’s prodigious amassing of facts concerning artificial selection of traits to demonstrate an analogy for natural selection. It also advances his hypothesis of pangenesis and gemmules, as the agents of the inheritance of characteristics. The Variation ‘contained his hypothesis of pangenesis, by means of which Darwin tried to frame an explanation of hereditary resemblance, inheritance of acquired characters, atavism, and regeneration. It was a brave attempt to account for a number of phenomena which were beyond the bounds of scientific knowledge in his day, such as fertilization by the union of sperm with egg, the mechanism of chromosomal inheritance, and the development of the embryo by successive cell division. His hypothesis of pangenesis could not therefore give a permanently acceptable account of the multitude of phenomena it was designed to explain. It was, however, a point of departure for particulate theories of inheritance in the latter nineteenth century’ (DSB).
The first issue differs substantially from the second issue, which in fact is more a second edition, with major revisions to the text.
Freeman 877; Norman 597 (second issue)
GBP 2750.00
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