Books

Second edition. London: Smith, Elder, & Co., 1876. Octavo (7 3/8" x 5 1/16", 188mm x 126mm). [Full collation available.] With 7 plates: 2 folding lithographed maps, 1 folding lithographed plan with hand-color and 4 folding engraved plates after G.B. Sowerby Jr. Bound in the publisher's green blocked cloth (re-backed, with the original back-strip laid down). Title, author and imprint gilt to the spine. Brown-coated end-papers (renewed). Re-backed, with the original back-strip laid down. Fore-corners strengthened. End-papers renewed. Mild even tanning throughout, a little heavier at the extremities. A repaired tear to the fore-edge of DD2 (pp. 403-404), not affecting the text. Some small chips to the edges of the plates at the end. A partially-erased graphite gift inscription ("Alice Feilding/ From Father, 9th March, 1886/ Dover") to the recto of the front binder's blank. Charles Darwin (1809-1882) was a lad of 22 when he set off as a supernumerary gentleman-naturalist aboard HMS Beagle under the command of Robert FitzRoy on 27 December 1831. He defied his father's wishes in going, receiving financial sponsorship from his cousin Josiah Wedgwood II (pioneer of bone china). The trip brought Darwin through the Southern Hemisphere over the course of nearly five years; he began on the coasts of South America, visited the Galapagos Islands and sailed west through New Zealand, Australia, South Africa and finally Brazil again before returning to Britain. The voyage of Beagle (her second) was the great formative experience of Darwin's youth. In his Life and Letters (I.61) he wrote: "The voyage of the Beagle has been by far the most important event in my life, and has determined my whole career." Although he is best known as a biologist, Darwin's first love was geology, and his Geological observations were among his earliest publications (first edition 1844). His analysis of the physical terrain of distant islands in the South Pacific -- most famously the Gal�pagos, but also St. Helena, Ascension, Tahiti and so forth -- was, so to speak, the rock that loosed the avalanche of his theories of evolution based on the pressures of divergent habitats. Darwin's return to the subject finds him largely contented with his youthful observations. The partly-erased but still fairly legible gift inscription adds an interesting provenance to an important book: Alice Feilding (1863-1940) published in 1899 Faith-Healing and 'Christian Science' (London: Duckworth), a scholarly analysis of religious medicine and in particular Christian Science, which began just twenty years prior. The donor was Feilding's father, General Sir Percy Robert Basil Feilding, son of the Earl of Denbigh and married to a daughter of the Marquess of Bath. After distinguished service in the Coldstream Guards in the Crimean War, he was put in command of the South-Eastern District in 1885. The District was the center of the army in the Southeastern counties of England, centered in Dover (where the book was presented) and later in Aldershot. After merging and shifting, the District is now part of Land Forces, and its head Commander-in-Chief.From the collection of Theodore "Ted" Benttinen (1948-2023), an MIT-educated oceanographer and explorer who went to both poles on research missions. Benttinen amassed a formidable collection of books of exploration, particularly strong in Pacific voyages as well as in polar accounts. The present volume was lot 87 in the Sotheby's New York 9 December 2024 sale of his library.Freeman F276.

This book by Charles Darwin provides insights into the geological processes observed on volcanic islands, contributing to the understanding of volcanic activity and its impact on geology.