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DARWIN, Charles. Geological Observations on South America. Being the third part of the Geology of the Voyage of the Beagle, under the command of Capt. Fitzroy, R.N. during the years 1832 to 1836. London: Stewart & Murray for Smith, Elder & Co., 1846.
8o (223 x 140 mm). 32-page publisher's catalogue dated July, 1846 (only occasionally present). Engraved folding map, 4 folding engraved plates, one folding hand-colored lithographic geological cross-section by G.B. Sowerby Junior; extra folding plate of shells at end (see below). Original purple cloth, decorated in blind, spine with title and price in gilt, uncut, with the binder's ticket of Westleys & Clark on rear pastedown (spine and board edges slightly sunned). Provenance: Friedrich Klincksieck, Paris (bookseller's ticket on front pastedown).
FIRST EDITION of the third and last of Darwin's geological reports on the Beagle voyage. In it, he described the pampas, the plateaux, and the Andes, showing how they had been gradually pushed up in the way Lyell had surmised without the intervention of catastrophic events. The descriptions of secondary fossil shells from South America, illustrated in Sowerby's plates, are by Edward Forbes. The additional folding plate seems to be ad advertisement by Sowerby in his capacity as publisher for a work by Searles Valentine Wood (1798-1800), and contains a manuscript caption: "Sowerby's Fossils of British Strata. Crag, by S.V. Wood Esq. F.G.S. 5 each part, 4 plates, 100 figures, with descripttons," and with an address added in manuscript: "50 Great Russell St., Bloomsbury." This work never appeared but Wood did publish a monograph entitled The Crag Mollusca in 1848 under the aegis of the Palaeontological Society; this has plates by Sowerby, and the additional plate here appears as plate 3 in that work, but with engraved captions added. Using a plate as a prospectus is quite rare. Its presence here may reflect a favor granted to the Sowerbys in connection with their work on Shells; the father contributed an appendix describing them, pp.249-64 and his son drew them. There are a number of relevant letters by Darwin in his correspondence from 1844-46. Freeman 273; Norman 587; Sabin 18646.
8o (223 x 140 mm). 32-page publisher's catalogue dated July, 1846 (only occasionally present). Engraved folding map, 4 folding engraved plates, one folding hand-colored lithographic geological cross-section by G.B. Sowerby Junior; extra folding plate of shells at end (see below). Original purple cloth, decorated in blind, spine with title and price in gilt, uncut, with the binder's ticket of Westleys & Clark on rear pastedown (spine and board edges slightly sunned). Provenance: Friedrich Klincksieck, Paris (bookseller's ticket on front pastedown).
FIRST EDITION of the third and last of Darwin's geological reports on the Beagle voyage. In it, he described the pampas, the plateaux, and the Andes, showing how they had been gradually pushed up in the way Lyell had surmised without the intervention of catastrophic events. The descriptions of secondary fossil shells from South America, illustrated in Sowerby's plates, are by Edward Forbes. The additional folding plate seems to be ad advertisement by Sowerby in his capacity as publisher for a work by Searles Valentine Wood (1798-1800), and contains a manuscript caption: "Sowerby's Fossils of British Strata. Crag, by S.V. Wood Esq. F.G.S. 5 each part, 4 plates, 100 figures, with descripttons," and with an address added in manuscript: "50 Great Russell St., Bloomsbury." This work never appeared but Wood did publish a monograph entitled The Crag Mollusca in 1848 under the aegis of the Palaeontological Society; this has plates by Sowerby, and the additional plate here appears as plate 3 in that work, but with engraved captions added. Using a plate as a prospectus is quite rare. Its presence here may reflect a favor granted to the Sowerbys in connection with their work on Shells; the father contributed an appendix describing them, pp.249-64 and his son drew them. There are a number of relevant letters by Darwin in his correspondence from 1844-46. Freeman 273; Norman 587; Sabin 18646.