Estimated Price:

$25,000 - $35,000

Realised Price:

$37,200

What is this symbol? This symbol indicates that this auction hose has verified this price result.

"On the Tendency of Species to form Varieties; and on the Perpetuation of Varieties and Species by Natural Means of Selection," in Journal of the Proceedings of the Linnean Society, Zoology, Vol. III, No. 9, pp. 45-62. London: Longman, Brown, Green, Longmans & Roberts, and Williams and Norgate, 1858

In 8s (8 1/4 x 5 1/2 in.; 210 x 140 mm, unopened). 2 text engravings in T. H. Huxley's "On some points in the Anatomy of Nautilus pompilius." Publisher's light pink printed wrappers, text stab-sewn; infinitesimal loss to lower left corner of front wrapper. Green cloth folding-case.

LITERATURE

Freeman 347; Grolier/Horblit 23a; Grolier/Medicine 70a; Norman 592; Printing and the Mind of Man 344a; cf. Dibner 199

NOTE

An immaculately preserved copy of the preliminary exposition of the theory of evolution by natural selection. After postponing for many years publication of his own researches on natural selection, Darwin was startled to learn that Alfred Wallace had independently arrived at a nearly identical hypothesis about the development of species. After reading the paper on species divergence that Wallace sent to him from the Spice Islands, Darwin confessed to Charles Lyell, "I never saw a more striking coincidence; if Wallace had my ms. sketch written out in 1842, he could not have made a better short abstract! Even his terms now stand as heads of my chapters. ... So all my originality, whatever it may amount to, will be smashed ..." (18 June 1858).

Lyell and Joseph D. Hooker suggested that the two naturalists present their findings simultaneously, and they read Darwin and Wallace's joint announcement of the evolution theory to the Linnean Society on 1 July 1858. When the mutual paper was published the following month, Lyell and Hooker provided a brief introduction that undertook to establish Darwin's priority: "These gentlemen having, independently and unknown to one another, conceived the same very ingenious theory to account for the appearance and perpetuation of varieties and of specific forms on our planet, may both fairly claim the merit of being original thinkers in this important line of inquiry; but neither of them having published their views, though Mr. Darwin has for many years past been repeatedly urged by us to do so, and both authors having now unreservedly placed their papers in our hands, we think it would best promote the interests of science that a selection from them should be laid before the Linnean Society." The joint papers--appearing in order of composition to further promote the notion of Darwin's priority--comprise a brief extract from Darwin's manuscript "on Species"; an abstract of a 1857 letter from Darwin to the American botanist Asa Gray; and Wallace's paper "On the Tendency of Varieties to Depart Indefinitely from the Original Type."

Five issues of "On the Tendency of Species to form Varieties" were printed from the same setting of type: the number of the Linnean Society Proceedings for Fellows who took only the zoological papers (as with the present copy); the number of the Proceedings containing both zoological and botanical papers; the annual volume of the Proceedings, again available in both complete and zoology-only issues; and authors' offprints.