THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES BY MEANS OF NATURAL SELECTION

The Highly Important Sixth Edition, with additions and corrections, (thirteenth thousand), the last edition which Darwin lived to amend and revise. This copy with pleasing provenance, the copy of Anthony Traill, Provost of Trinity College Dublin. Folding lithographed diagram by W. West. 8vo, publisher's original green cloth, gilt lettered on the spine and blocked in blind in a panel design on the covers, original brown coated endpapers, all edges untrimmed. xxi, 458 pp. A very fine, handsome, bright and unmarked copy, very clean and crisp throughout, unusually so. A VERY FINE, BRIGHT AND PLEASING COPY OF THE RARE SIXTH EDITION OF 1872, THE GREATEST BIOLOGICAL WORK EVER WRITTEN. IT IS CONSIDERED RARE AND WAS ISSUED IN A QUANTITY NOT EXCEEDING 2000 COPIES. This edition includes an expanded version of "An Historical Sketch of the Recent Progress of Opinion on the Origin of Species," as well as a table of corrections. The Sixth Edition of 1872 consisted of 3,000 copies, including three states of the title page, reading "Eleventh", "Twelfth," and "Thirteenth" Thousand The Sixth Edition contained a new chapter, VII, written to address and to refute the views certain other scientists. A glossary appears for the first time, and additionally, it is in this sixth edition that Darwin used for the first time the word "evolution". The word was inserted three times into the text, twice on pages 201 and three times on page 424. 'This edition was extensively revised by Darwin and the new chapter VII, was inserted to confute the views of the Roman Catholic biologist S. George Mivart. The title changes to THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES, and a glossary appears. It is in this edition that the word 'evolution' occurs for the first time. It had been used in the first edition of THE DESCENT OF MAN in the previous year, but not before in this work. 'Evolved' had bee the last word of the text in all previous editions, but 'evolution' had been omitted, perhaps to avoid confusion with the use of the word by Herbert Spencer or with its more particular embryological meaning. The word had however been used in its transformist sense by Lyell as early as 1832 (Principles of Geology, Vol. II, p. 11). On the verso of the title leaf of the 1872 issues there are advertisements for nine of Darwin's works, whereas the 1873 reprint has ten. It must have been in press before November 1872 when EXPRESSION OF THE EMOTIONS came out, otherwise the new book would have been added. (See Freeman) Darwin's Revolutionary Masterwork, in which he not only "drew an entirely new picture of the workings of organic nature; he revolutionized our methods of thinking and our outlook on the natural order of things. The recognition that constant change is the order of the universe had been finally established and a vast step forward in the uniformity of nature had been taken." [PMM) Together with Copernicus' DE REVOLUTIONIBUS and Newton's PRINCIPIA, it is deemed one of the three greatest and most important scientific works ever penned. "The most influential scientific work of the nineteenth century" and "The most important biological work ever written" (Horblit, Freeman). Darwin's elaboration of the theory of natural selection laid the groundwork for the controversy over the evolution of man, and with only slight modification by such scientists as Stephen Jay Gould, Darwin's ideas remain the umbra under which most current biological research is conducted. Darwin had intended the book to be an abstract of his 'big book' on transmutation, of which only the first part (Variation Under Domestication, 1868) was published in his lifetime. This copy was owned by Anthony Traill whose neat signature is found at the head of the half-title page. Traill was actively involved in politics during the 1870's and 1880's. He was an Ulster Unionist and in 1884 was appointed High Sheriff of Antrim. He was also chairman of the world's first electric tramway, Portrush, founded with his brother William. He was appoint.