THE VARIATION OF ANIMALS AND PLANTS UNDER DOMESTICATION

2 volumes. Second edition, eighth impression, a very early reissue of an important edition revised. With illustrations throughout. 8vo, original polished green cloth gilt lettered and decorated on the spines, paneled in blind on the covers. xiv, 473, [1]; x, 495, 32 catalogue pp. A very handsome set, beautifully preserved and unusually fresh in the original bright and unfaded cloth, still with the gilt bright and strong in colour, a tight and clean copy.

Edizione: a handsome set of this highly important work. the second edition is very important in that darwin made a number of corrections, but more importantly he reworked chapter xxvii on pangenesis. this work "represents the only section of darwin's big book on the origin of species which was printed in his lifetime and corresponds to its first two intended chapters. it contains, in chapter xxvii, his provisional hypothesis of pangenesis; one which he thought was new, but has a long back history" (freeman 877). <br> the first work to truly discuss the actual origin and development of species as an accepted scientific method.<br> the second part of his 'big book' was not published until 1875, under the title natural selection. it was in this work that darwin attempted his finalization of the understanding or pangenesis and an explanation of acquired characteristics and hereditary resemblance. these subjects were near to impossible to explain in darwin’s time as scientific methodology and technology had simply not developed to the point at which finite and provable studies on genes and chromosomes could be explored.