Recent Acquisitions

Air Ministry | Signal Book for Use in Air Navigation

• Overview
• Details & Condition

• First edition, an uncommon aircraft signal book published at the beginning of the Second World War in February 1940, this copy with three pages of manuscript notes on Morse procedures loosely inserted.

  The introduction states that this signal book was “drawn up in handy form for crews” and was “intended to facilitate communications between aircraft and other aircraft, aeronautical stations, ships or coast signalling stations using the International Code of Signals”. It is “divided into three parts: the first describes the signals prescribed by the International Air Convention of 1919 and a certain number of additional signals; the second part contains instructions for the use of signals in messages; and the third part is a Code of abbreviations extracted from the International Code of Signals”. The illustrations include national flags as displayed by ships and aircraft; aircraft navigation lights and airport signalling; distress signals; signals to be used next to grounded planes (”I require petrol”, “I require medical attendance”, “friendly natives”, “All is well. I can carry out repairs and take-off without assistance”). The final section lists single, double, and triple-letter morse signals (“I sighted a disabled vessel in [position indicated] apparently without radio”, “prepare for a cyclone”, “a balloon which has broken its cable is adrift”, “I have on board mail for you”).

• ...Drawn Up in Conformity with the Air Convention of 1919 and the International Code of Signals. Published for the information and guidance of all concerned. By command of the Air Council. Air Publication 1795. London: His Majesty’s Stationery Office, February, 1940.

  Octavo. Original blue-grey boards, blue cloth backstrip, titles to upper board in black, text tabbed by chapter. Contemporary three-page manuscript detailing the Morse procedure for sending ship and receiving ship loosely inserted. Illustrations and charts throughout the text, many in basic colours. Binding rubbed with some marks, spots, and partial toning, corners worn, spotting to early leaves and edges of text block. Very good condition.

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Barthez, Paul-Joseph | Nouvelle Méchanique des Mouvements de l'Homme et des Animaux

• Overview
• Details & Condition

• First edition of this important work in the history of neurophysiology by the French physician Paul-Joseph Barthez (1734-1806), who “demonstrated through very intricate anatomical analysis that the simple hydraulic explanations offered by the iatrochemists (particularly Borelli) would never explain the delicate balance and control of muscles that are needed for such motions as walking and swimming” (Dictionary of Scientific Biography I, p. 479). An attractive copy in contemporary mottled calf.

• Carcassonne: Pierre Polere, 1798.

  Quarto (258 x 195 mm). Contemporary mottled calf, spine gilt in compartments, red morocco label, triple gilt fillets, gilt turn-ins, marbled endpapers, all edges gilt. Small abrasion where an signature has been removed from the verso of the front free endpaper, a few tiny spots to the title and occasionally to the contents. Mild rubbing and scuffing of the binding. An excellent, unsophisticated copy.

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Bewick, Thomas | A History of British Birds

• Overview
• Details & Condition

• The seventh edition of one of the finest illustrated ornithology books ever published, the first field guide affordable to the middle class. This being the final edition to include new wood engravings, including Bewick’s last bird engraving, the Cream Coloured Plover. An attractive set, the contents fresh.

  “In early May 1825, near Helpston in Northampstonshire, the poet John Clare saw a small brown bird that he could not identify. Did anyone, he asked his friend Joseph Henderson, have a copy of Bewick’s Birds? All lovers of birds in these years looked to Bewick. He spoke directly to a man like Clare, a former farm worker and lime burner who knew every inch of the fields around his home, and to Henderson, head gardener at the nearby hall. Bewick was in his seventies by then, but he came from the same world as them, growing up on a small-holding in the Tyne Valley... He was a fine naturalist himself, and his work combined keen, detailed observation with a new approach showing animals and birds in their natural settings, as part of the whole great interrelated web of nature. ‘Nature’ and God fused together in Bewick’s vision, as a rolling force that infused every aspect of life, from the habits of an ant to the vastness of the universe, ‘this sublime, this amazing, this mighty work of Suns and Worlds innumerable’. He felt its darkness as well as its beauty and his work touched the dawning Romantic age: Wordsworth was among the first to sing his praises and Charlotte Brontë placed his prints of icy seas in the hands of her young heroine, Jane Eyre” (Uglow, Nature’s Engraver, pp. xvii-xviii).

• Newcastle: for R. E. Bewick, sold by him, Longman and Co., 1832.

  2 volumes, octavo (211 x 129 mm). Mid-19th century calf, spines elaborately gilt in compartments with floral tools, brown morocco labels, double gilt fillets, gilt turn-ins, marbled endpapers and edges. Wood engravings throughout. Bindings a little rubbed with a few small scuffs and abrasions, including a one and a half cm abrasion affecting a title label on volume I, light spotting to the title of volume II but otherwise the contents are clean and fresh. Very good condition.

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Brazier, Mary A. B. | A History of Neurophysiology in the 19th Century

• Overview
• Details & Condition

• First edition, first printing. Presentation copy inscribed by the author on the front free endpaper, “For Edward & Marthẽ, my great friends, Mary A. B. Brazier”.

  Author Mary Brazier (1904-1995) was an internationally recognised neurophysiologist who also became a respected historian of science in later life. She was educated at Bedford College in London, and did important research on the nervous system, including electrical activity in thyroid disease, nerve injuries, “war neuroses”, and the effects of anaesthesia on the brain. Following the Second World War she worked with Norbert Weiner at MIT, where they developed an analog correlator to analyse EEG and other nerve potentials, then joined the Brain Research Institute at UCLA, where she continued pioneering the use of computers in neurology. “As editor of the important new journal in her field, she published an important bibliography of EEG publications ranging from 1875-1948... Her later work on the history of her field explored these early publications and extended back into the beginning of neurophysiology in the seventeenth century” (Ogilvie, pp. 174-175).

• New York: Raven Press, 1988.

  Tall quarto. Original burgundy boards, titles to spine gilt. Illustrations throughout the text. Spine very slightly rolled, lower corner bumped. An excellent copy in the lightly rubbed jacket with a short closed split at the bottom of the lower panel and a few tiny creases.

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Eastern Associated Telegraph Companies | Fifty Years of "Via Eastern"

• Overview
• Details & Condition

• First and only edition. This copy with a collection of material connected with Eastern Associated Telegraph Companies, including a typed letter signed forwarding this copy to E. C. Luttrell of the Press Liaison Office, as well as a pamphlet “World-Wide Communication” celebrating the silver jubilee of Cable and Wireless Ltd., another pamphlet on Cable and Wireless reprinted from The Times, and two invitations to Luttrell to attend company events.

  The Eastern Associated Telegraph Company had its origin in a number of British telegraph companies founded in the 1860s by Sir John Pender. During the last half of 19th century the Company expanded by acquiring other firms in the Mediterranean, southeast Asia, and South America, changing its name to the plural “Companies” in 1902. The EATC made significant contributions during the First World War, and in 1928 was amalgamated into the national provider, Imperial and International Communications Ltd., known from 1934 as Cable and Wireless Limited. In the 1980s it became the first firm to offer an alternative telephone service to the of British Telecom.

• ...A Souvenir and record of the Celebrations in Connection with the Jubilee of the Eastern Associated Telegraph Companies, MCMXXII. London: Waterlow and Sons Limited for the Eastern Associated Telegraph Companies, 1922.
  
  

  Quarto. Original white cloth, titles to spine and upper board gilt, top edge gilt, others untrimmed, marbled endpapers. Portrait frontispiece and 34 pates, most tipped-in, 2 double-page folding charts. Cloth a little rubbed and marked, spine toned, spotting to endpapers and edges of text block, contents toned. A very good copy.

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Frazer, R. A & W. J. Duncan. | The Flutter of Aeroplane Wings

• Overview
• Details & Condition

• First edition of this key work on aeronautical engineering, widely known as “The Flutter Bible”. Scarce, with only institutional 15 copies recorded in WorldCat and one in auction records, at Dominic Winter in 2011.

  The term “flutter” refers to sustained oscillations of the structures of planes that can damage or destroy them. The first documented case occurred in 1916, affecting the tail of a Handley Page O/400 bomber, and by the 1920s flutter was a major area of aeronautics research.

  “At the NPL [National Physical Laboratory] work was initiated in 1925 by R. A. Frazer; he was joined in the following year by W. J. Duncan. Two years later, in August 1928, they published a monograph, ‘The Flutter of Aeroplane Wings’, R&M 1155. This slim volume, of just over 200 pages, has been known ever since as ‘The Flutter Bible’, and understandably so... it is quite astonishing in its completeness. Frazer and Duncan solved the flutter problem, in all its essentials, laying down the principles on which flutter investigations have been based ever since.” (Collar, “The First Fifty Years of Aeroelasticity”, Aerospace, February 1978, pp. 14-15).

  Frazer and Duncan’s research programme “made use of simplified wind tunnel models to identify and study phenomena, gave well-considered, cautiously detailed design recommendations, and indicated broad programs required for measurement of aerodynamic derivatives. They introduced an important concept of ‘semirigid modes’ which greatly simplifies the theoretical analysis... In effect this concept enables the problem to be handled by ordinary differential equations rather than by much less tractable partial differential equations” (Garrick & Reed, “Historical Development of Aircraft Flutter”, Journal of Aircraft vol. 18, no. 11, Nov 1981, pp. 900-901).

  Reference: Bibliography of Vibration and Flutter of Aircraft Wings, US Works Progress Administration, 1937. Bibliography of Aeronautics, National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, 1930.

• ...Aeronautical Research Committee. Reports and Memoranda No. 1155. (Ae. 320.) August 1928. London: His Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1929.

  Sextodecimo. Original grey cloth, titles to spine and upper board in black. 3 plates from photographs, 2 double-sided plates of charts, charts and figures throughout the text. Tail of spine and lower corner bumped, cloth a little rubbed and scuffed, contents faintly toned. A very good copy.

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Frazer, R. A. & W. J. Duncan | The Flutter of Monoplanes, Biplanes and Tail Units

• Overview
• Details & Condition

• First edition of the sequel to The Flutter of Aeroplane Wings (1929), widely considered the “Bible of Flutter”. Scarce; WorldCat locates only nine institutional copies, and auction records include one copy sold at Dominic Winter in 2011.

  The term “flutter” refers to sustained oscillations of the structures of planes that can damage or destroy them. The first documented case occurred in 1916, affecting the tail of a Handley Page O/400 bomber, and by the 1920s flutter was a major area of aeronautics research.

  “At the NPL [National Physical Laboratory] work was initiated in 1925 by R. A. Frazer; he was joined in the following year by W. J. Duncan. Two years later, in August 1928, they published a monograph, ‘The Flutter of Aeroplane Wings’, R&M 1155. This slim volume, of just over 200 pages, has been known ever since as ‘The Flutter Bible’, and understandably so... it is quite astonishing in its completeness. Frazer and Duncan solved the flutter problem, in all its essentials, laying down the principles on which flutter investigations have been based ever since.” (Collar, “The First Fifty Years of Aeroelasticity”, Aerospace, February 1978, pp. 14-15).

  Frazer and Duncan’s research programme “made use of simplified wind tunnel models to identify and study phenomena, gave well-considered, cautiously detailed design recommendations, and indicated broad programs required for measurement of aerodynamic derivatives. They introduced an important concept of ‘semirigid modes’ which greatly simplifies the theoretical analysis... In effect this concept enables the problem to be handled by ordinary differential equations rather than by much less tractable partial differential equations” (Garrick & Reed, “Historical Development of Aircraft Flutter”, Journal of Aircraft vol. 18, no. 11, Nov. 1981, pp. 900-901).
  
  Reference: Bibliography of Vibration and Flutter of Aircraft Wings, US Works Progress Administration, 1937.

  Bibliography of Vibration and Flutter of Aircraft Wings, US Works Progress Administration, 1937. Bibliography of Aeronautics, National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, 1930.

• ...(A Sequel to R. & M. 1155). Aeronautical Research Committee Reports and Memoranda No. 1255 (Ae 404.) January 1931. London: His Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1931.

  Sextodecimo. Original grey cloth, titles to spine and upper board in black. 8 plates of which 4 are double-sided. Slight rubbing at the extremities, contents faintly toned. An excellent, fresh copy.

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Gibson, Charles R. | The Romance of Modern Photography

• Overview
• Details & Condition

• An uncommon early printing of this popular work on photography, originally published in 1908.

  Dr. Charles R. Gibson (1870-1931) of Glasgow was a prolific author of popular science books aimed at children. The son of a curtain manufacturer, he inherited the family firm in 1900 and was able to indulge his love of science, being elected to the Royal Society of Edinburg in 1910. He is best known for his contributions to the “Romance of...” series — including volumes on electricity, manufacturing, and scientific discovery — which feature elaborately illustrated cloth bindings such as this one.

• ...Its Discovery and Its Achievements. With Fifty-Two Illustrations. London: Seeley, Service & Co. Limited, 1917.

  Octavo. Original blue cloth elaborately blocked in white, red, and gilt. Frontispiece and 25 plates from photographs, 2 illustrations within the text. Bookseller’s ticket of John Beal & Son, Brighton, to the front pastedown. Bookplate of R. S. Burgess. Spine rolled and tanned, cloth rubbed and partially faded, ring mark to the upper board, small ink stains to the lower board, joints cracked, spotting to edges of text block and occasionally to contents. Very good condition.

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Gould, Stephen Jay | Ontogeny and Phylogeny

• Overview
• Details & Condition

• First edition, first printing of the author’s first book.

  Stephen Jay Gould (1941-2002) was one of the leading evolutionary biologists of the 20th century. His theory of “punctuated equilibria” radically revised the idea that evolution is a slow and constant accumulation of changes, pointing out that instead it often occurs in rapid bursts of speciation followed by periods of stasis. He was a prominent defender of the teaching of evolution in schools, and a leading critic of the field of sociobiology, which he saw as providing a pseudoscientific basis for discrimination. But he was best known as a popular science writer, penning numerous books and a series of 300 essays for a general audience.

  Gould's first book, Ontogeny and Phylogeny, was written at the suggestion of Ernst Mayr as a way to become comfortable with long-form writing before tackling The Structure of Evolutionary Theory, his magnum opus on punctuated equilibria. It explores the relationship between embryonic development and evolution, and includes analyses of disproven theories, such as Haeckel’s hypotheses that ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny. Of all Gould’s books, Ontogeny and Phylogeny is “the one with the most impact... to say that this work is a hallmark in this area of evolutionary theory would be an understatement. it proved the catalyst for much of the future work in the field, and to a large degree was the inspiration for the modern field of ‘evolutionary developmental biology’. Gould’s hope was to show that the relationship between ontogeny and phylogeny is fundamental to evolution, and at its heart is a simple premise—that variations in the timing and rate of development provide the raw material upon which natural selection can operate” (MacNamara, “Heterochrony, Disparity and Macroevolution”, Paleobiology 31(2), 2005, pp. 17-26).

• Cambridge, MA & London: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1977.

  Octavo. Original brown cloth, titles to spine in silver, green endpapers. With the dust jacket. Frontispiece and illustrations throughout the text. Small, faint ink stamp to the half title. Cloth lightly rubbed at the extremities. An excellent copy in the jacket with some dampstain and cockling affecting the upper and lower panels.

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Gould, Stephen Jay. Wonderful Life | The Burgess Shale and the Nature of History

• Overview
• Details & Condition

• First UK edition in the oversized jacket proof, from the Harvard office library of the author, with his posthumous bookplate. Wonderful Life was originally published in the US in 1989.

  Author Stephen Jay Gould (1941-2002) was the prominent Harvard zoologist and palaeontologist who developed the theory of punctuated equilibria, which states that evolution occurs in rapid bursts of speciation separated by long periods of stasis. This radical, and still controversial, concept upended the received wisdom that evolution is the slow, constant accumulation of genetic changes.
  
  But he was best known to the general public as the beloved author of popular essays and science books. Wonderful Life, which uses the early life forms of the Cambrian period (found as fossils in Canada’s Burgess Shale formation) to explore the role of contingency in evolution, was a New York Times best-seller and winner of the Royal Society’s Rhône-Poulenc Prize, which annually recognises an outstanding work of popular science. This copy was part of Gould’s office library at his death, and includes a publisher’s proof of the jacket design. The jacket bears vertical creases, probably because it was folded to be posted to the author.

• London: Hutchinson Radius, 1990.

  Octavo. Original blue boards, titles to spine gilt, blue endpapers. With the proof dust jacket. Frontispiece and illustrations throughout. Gould’s posthumous bookplate. An excellent copy in the stiff card proof jacket with a vertical crease each to the upper panel, lower panel, and front flap.

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Hansen, James | Storms of My Grandchildren

• Overview
• Details & Condition

• First edition, first printing of this important popular work by leading climate scientist James Hansen (1941 - ).

  Hansen, currently director of the Program on Climate Science, Awareness and Solutions at Columbia University, has been studying climate change since the 1970s, making important contributions to our understanding of the atmosphere of Venus; how the global average temperature is measured and calculated; the effects of black carbon (such as that produced by forest fires and burning coal); and the design and analysis of climate models, showing that climate change has been occurring faster than most early models predicted.
  
  Hansen first came to public prominence when he testified to Congress in 1988 on the causes and effects of climate change, and in recent years he has been an outspoken activist, critical of ineffectual mitigation policies, and being arrested three times during 2011 demonstrations against the Keystone Pipeline. Storms of My Grandchildren explains the science of anthropogenic climate change, why it threatens humanity’s future, discusses the political issues that kept it from being adequately addressed, and proposes a way foreword for the economy and environment.

• ...The Truth about the Coming Climate Catastrophe and Our Last Chance to Save Humanity. Illustrations by Makiko Sato. New York: Bloomsbury, 2009.

  Octavo. Original black boards, titles to spine in silver. With the dust jacket. Illustrations and charts within the text. Spine a little rolled. An excellent, fresh copy in the bright jacket.

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Hawker Siddeley Aviation Ltd. | Design Handbook Volume I General [&] A.300B Supplement

• Overview
• Details & Condition

• Due to this item's weight, extra shipping costs will apply.
  
  

  A rare copy of the Hawker Siddeley Design Handbook, published in 1969 in preparation for work on the revolutionary Airbus A300, the world’s first wide-body, twin-engine jet airliner, together with a copy of the 300-page Supplement specifically for that aircraft. As explained by Director and Chief Engineer J. P. Smith in the introduction, this handbook was distributed to “Design Engineering staff at Hatfield and Chester” as well as “all HSA design departments to enable those concerned to study the content in preparation for its use with new projects. The A 300B and the HS 144 [possibly an early version of the British Aerospace 146 short-haul airliner] will be the first projects to which the new Handbook will apply at Hatfield and Chester” while current handbooks would “remain in use for Trident, HS 125, Comet, and other earlier projects”.

  The Handbook itself includes every annual amendment issued up to 1978, and the separate A300B Supplement also includes the twelve amendments up to 1970. Handbooks of this type are rare on the market, and we can locate no copies in institutional collections or at auction. As the introduction states, they were considered company property, to be returned “when not required or should an individual be leaving the service of the Company”. Their size and unwieldy format also made it less likely that copies would be preserved in such nice condition. With design handbooks of this type it was standard procedure for outdated sections to be destroyed and replaced with each amendment, and it appears that this was done here, as a number of different issues are represented throughout (as indicated in the footer of each page).

  The Hawker Siddeley Aircraft Company was founded in 1935 by the combination of Armstrong Siddeley and Hawker Aircraft, then the two largest British aircraft manufacturing firms. Hawker Siddeley was one of the most important manufacturing firms of the Second World War, producing the famed Hawker Hurricanes. Following the war they moved into a variety of military and civilian markets, including guided missile, nuclear propulsion, electrical engineering, railway, and space technologies. Along with the Airbus A300, their most well-known post-war products were the HS Harrier, the first vertical take-off and landing jet aircraft, and the world’s first commercial jet airliner, the de Havilland Comet.

• ...Copy No. 232. [Kingston upon Thames]: Hawker Siddeley Aviation Ltd., 1969-78.

  Handbook approximately 600 pages. Originally issued unbound with holes for a ring binder, this copy bound by the original owner with turquoise ribbon. The separate A300 Supplement being approximately 328 pages and bound with a metal clip. Some double page chart in both volumes. A little spotting to the top leaf and edges of text block of the handbook, some small marks and scuffs to the outer leaes of the Supplement. Excellent condition.

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Hibbert, Samuel | History of the Extinct Volcanos of the Basin of Neuwied

• Overview
• Details & Condition

• First and only edition of this rare work on the effect of volcanic activity on the development of the Rhine Valley, in the original cloth. WorldCat locates only three copies, at Berlin, Göttingen, and the University of Manchester. Only two have appeared at auction in the last decade, this copy at at Forum Auctions in 2017 and one in library cloth at Dominic Winter in 2013.

  Author Samuel Hibbert Ware (1782-1848) was an antiquarian and geologist who spent most of his life in Edinburgh, where he was a member of numerous learned societies and was friendly with notables such as Sir Walter Scott. “In 1817 Hibbert visited Shetland, where he discovered 'chromate of iron' and undertook a geological survey of the country. For this discovery the Society of Arts awarded him in 1820 the Iris gold medal. In Shetland he also discovered what he described as 'native hydrate of magnesia'. In 1822 he published his Description of the Shetland Islands, in which he described the local geology and antiquities. Hibbert contributed various papers to the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, of which he was secretary from 1823 to 1827, with responsibility for obtaining contributions for meetings and preparing them for publication. He remained an active member of the society, editing volumes and helping run the museum, under what were sometimes difficult conditions.... In 1824, at the request of the Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society, Hibbert delivered at Manchester a course of lectures on geology, and in 1827 a further course for the Manchester Royal Institution... He and his family also spent two or three years abroad, chiefly visiting the volcanic districts of France, Italy, and northern Germany, and he published a History of the Extinct Volcanoes of the Basin of Neuwied on the Lower Rhine (1832) on his return to Edinburgh” (ODNB).

  A History of the Extinct Volcanos was well received in the scientific community. A near contemporary, Edward Hull, described it as a work of “remarkable merit, if we consider the time at which it was written. For not only does it give a clear and detailed account of the volcanic phenomena of the Eifel and the Lower Rhine, but it anticipates the principles upon which modern writers account for the formation of river valleys and other physical features; and in working out the physical history of the Rhine Valley below Mainz, and its connection with the extinct volcanos which are found on both banks of that river, he has taken very much the same line of reasoning which was some years afterwards adopted by Sir A. Ramsay when dealing with the same subject. It does not appear that the latter writer was aware of Dr. Hibbert’s treatise” (Hull, Volcanos Past and Present, p. 7).

• ...on the Lower Rhine. With Maps, Views, and Other Illustrations. Edinburgh & London: W. and D. Lang; Treuttel and Wurtz ad Richter, 1832.

  Octavo. Original brown silk morieé, printed paper label to spine. 2 hand-coloured maps, one being the double page folding frontispiece, 6 lithographed plates of which 3 are double page, 18 illustrations within the text. Table and directions to the binder at rear. Publisher’s advert on the front pastedown, covered by a late-19th century Munden family bookplate. Splits at the head of the spine, some small worn spots at the extremities, joints cracked, some light offsetting affecting the maps, some of the plates darkened, light spotting to the edges of the text block. Edges untrimmed. Very good condition.

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Jenyns, Leonard | Observations in Meteorology

• Overview
• Details & Condition

• First edition of this significant contribution to 19th century meteorological records, uncommon in such nice condition.

  By the close of his career author Leonard Jenyns (later Blomefield, 1800-1893) was considered a “patriarch of natural history studies in Great Britain” (ODNB). Interested in science from a young age, Jenyns attended Cambridge, where he became a close friend and collaborator with J. S. Henslow. In 1823 Jenyns was ordained, and his first post was as curate of Swaffam Bulbeck, where he made the meteorological observations published in the present volume. Cambridge was nearby, and he maintained strong relations with his colleagues there, becoming friends with the younger Charles Darwin during the naturalist’s time as an undergraduate. Most famously, Jenyns was invited to join the Beagle voyage but declined and recommended Darwin instead, later writing that, “no better man could have been chosen for the purpose” (Darwin Correspondence project biographical sketch). Darwin and Jenyns remained friends and correspondents for the rest of their lives, with Jenyns describing the fish specimens that Darwin collected on his journey, culminating in Fishes of the Zoology of the Voyage of the Beagle, published between 1840 and 1842.

  Jenyns was a tireless observer, and made numerous contributions to the field of natural history. Other than the Fishes, his most important publications were A Systematic Catalogue of British Vertebrate Animals and A Manual of British Vertebrate Animals; “the latter work was held in high estimation as a work of reference” (ODNB). “In 1856 at the meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science at Cheltenham, he read a paper entitled 'The variation of species', a paper of which Darwin asked to be sent a copy. (Jenyns broadly supported the latter's ideas, subsequently published in Origin of Species.) In 1869 Jenyns was the donor of the Jenyns Library, a munificent gift of some 1200 volumes, which went to Bath's Royal Literary and Scientific Institution. He also donated to this institution his choice herbarium of British plants, consisting of more than forty folio and an equal number of quarto volumes, the result of his life work in this branch of science... The Proceedings of the Bath Field Club abound with papers and addresses from his pen. Not the least valuable are those on the climate and meteorology of Bath. It was entirely at his instance that the small observatory was erected in the Institution gardens in 1865” (ODNB).

• ...Relating to Temperature, the Winds, Atmospheric Pressure, the Aqueous Phenomena of the Atmosphere, Weather-Changes, etc., Being Chiefly the Results of a Meteorological Journal Kept for Nineteen Years at Swaffham Bulbeck in Cambridgeshire... London: John van Voorst, 1858.
  
  

  Octavo. Original green cloth, titles to spine gilt, decorative roundels to spine and borders to boards clocked in blind, yellow coated endpapers. Single leaf of publisher’s ads at rear. Lightly rubbed at the extremities, spine a little rolled, endpapers and half title tanned, occasional small spots to contents. An excellent copy, the cloth fresh.

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Kahn, Herman | Applications of Monte Carlo

• Overview
• Details & Condition

• First edition in the original wrappers. Though described as “revised”, this refers only to a shorter version presented at a meeting in 1954, and we can locate no copies of a 1954 edition in the record, only this 1956 edition. A significant and uncommon report by nuclear war theorist and futurist Herman Kahn (1922-1983) on using the Monte Carlo method in computer simulations.

  A significant and uncommon report by nuclear war theorist and futurist Herman Kahn (1922-1983) on using the Monte Carlo method in computer simulations.

  The Monte Carlo method was developed by John von Neumann, first as a way to simulate the physics of gases in the atmosphere, then to predict the behaviour of neutrons in nuclear chain reactions. Because the number of potential interactions in each case were so large, it wasn’t feasible to program each one into a computer simulation. Instead, von Neumann realised that a representative sample of the possible interactions could be produced. “A roulette wheel, later a table of “pseudo-random” numbers, could be used to generate the path any one particle would follow. What emerged was the shape — the upper and lower boundaries — of the probabilistic distribution of the event” (Ghamari-Tabrizi, The Worlds of Herman Kahn, p. 133).

  Kahn’s first years at the RAND Corporation “were devoted to simulating the activity of elementary particles and gamma rays that might penetrate various thicknesses of protective shields in nuclear reactors. He delivered papers on this topic at all three of the major unclassified conferences that introduced the Monte Carlo technique to the physics, engineering, mathematics, computing, and operations research communities in 1949 and 1954” (Ghamari-Tabrizi, The Worlds of Herman Kahn, pp. 132-133).

  Monte Carlo continued to influence Kahn’s methods and philosophy as he moved into more speculative pursuits, such as nuclear game theory. “He exulted in the ‘complete control’ that allowed him to tinker with probabilistic events. Like genies tumbling out of bottles, improbable events sprang forth and frolicked on command”, though he also warned against the dangers inherent in designing simulations based on statistical probabilities rather than real events. (Ghamari-Tabrizi, The Worlds of Herman Kahn, p. 136).

  In this document Kahn discusses “the general principle of doing Monte Carlo calculations with particular emphasis on reducing the amount of work involved”, but without discussing “important specific applications” as he hoped to later publish a more comprehensive book on the subject (foreword).

• ...RM-1237-AEC. 19 April 1954. Revised 27 April 1956. Prepared under contract with the U. S. Atomic Energy Commission... Santa Monica, CA: The RAND Corporation, 1956.

  Perfect bound. Original grey, morocco-patterned paper wrappers printed in dark blue with a window for the title. Equations and charts within the text. Pencilled ownership signature to the upper wrapper. Wrappers partially tanned and rubbed and creased at the edges, light spotting to title and edges of text block. Very good condition.

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Libby, Leona Marshall | Past Climates

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• Details & Condition

• First edition and an unusually fresh and attractive copy of this important work on using isotopes in ancient trees to study past climates.

  Leona (Woods) Marshall Libby (1919-1986) was one of the most prominent female physicists of the 20th century and an important member of the Manhattan project. Immediately upon earning her graduate degree in 1942 she joined Enrico Fermi’s research group at the University of Chicago, where she helped construct Chicago Pile-1, the world’s first nuclear reactor. Laura Fermi remembered her as “a tall young girl built like an athlete, who could do a man’s job and do it well” (”This Month in Physics History: Death of Leona Woods Marshall Libby”, American Physical Society, vol. 23, no. 10, 2014). Aged 23, she was the youngest and only female member of the team, and was present when the reactor went critical. Woods married her colleague, John Marshall, Jr., and the couple worked on Manhattan Project nuclear reactors at Argonne, Illinois and then Hanford, Washington, where she made significant contributions to the discovery that the fission by-product xenon-135 can slow and eventually stop the nuclear chain reaction.

  After the war Woods Marshall continued worked at Fermi’s Institute for Nuclear Studies, later joining the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton, Brookhaven National Laboratory, and New York University. In 1966 she married a former Manhattan Project colleague, the Nobel Prize-winning chemist Willard Libby. Libby and her husband were both interested in environmental issues, and “Although Leona Libby continued her research on particle physics, she became increasingly interested in Willard Libby’s work on the determination of ancient climates by observing tree rings” (Ogilvie p. 788). Libby was hired by UCLA in 1975, “where her research shifted to devising new methods for studying annual changes in temperature and rainfall patterns using isotope ratios of oxygen and carbon in tree rings” (”This Month in Physics History”).

  The present volume, published in 1983, discusses the chemical methods of climate research that Libby devised, and includes a significant chapter on the history of human interaction with the climate. In the preface she writes that, “This book describes the new science of tree thermometry, depending on measuring stable isotope ratios in wood, and its power to reveal climactic changes in the past... The method of tree thermometry depends on measuring the ratios of the stable isotopes of hydrogen and oxygen in tree rings. These elements derive from rain and snow, which in turn originate as water vapor distilled from the surface of the seas. Variations in sea surface temperature cause variations in the stable isotope ratios in the distilled water and therefore changes in the ratios as they are stored year by year in tree rings. By evaluating their changes in tree rings, we are able to determine climate changes in the past... By applying the method of Fourier analysis to the stable isotope measurements in trees, we can predict climate changes to be expected in the near future. Such predictions have not yet been tested, but they should certainly be studied for their potential influence on world food and energy supplies and on national defense”.

  Bibliography: Ogilvie pp. 787-788

• ...Tree Thermometers, Commodities, and People. Foreword by Rainer Berger. Austin, TX: University of Texas press, 1983.

  Octavo. Original khaki boards printed in white and green. Illustrations and charts throughout the text. Spine faded, some very light rubbing at the extremities. An excellent copy.

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Martius, Ernst Wilhelm | Neueste Anweisung, Pflanzen nach dem Leben abzudruken

• Overview
• Details & Condition

• First edition of this rare work on nature printing, an unsophisticated copy in the original wrappers, with four delicately produced plates, an unusually high number. Of the copies in institutional catalogues with plate counts listed, that in the German National Museum contains four plates, the Bavarian State Library copy contains three plates, those at Strasbourg, Munich, and Harvard have two plates, and the Bonn copy has only one.The plates provided are not always the same, with those present here being bittersweet, club moss, lilly of the valley, and belladonna.

  Author Ernst Wilhelm Martius (1756-1849) was a Regensburg apothecary, university instructor, and founding member of the Regensberg Botanical Society. He “devised a better way of inking leaves on a polished copper plate: the copper shining through made it easy to see whether any areas were underinked. Martius’s largest work containing nature prints was Icones Planatrum Originales (Original Images of Plants), issued in 1780. His method of working was shown in his Neueste Anweisung, Pflanzen nach dem Leben abzudrucken (New Instructions on Taking Fresh Prints from Plants) published in Wetzlar in 1784” (Cave, Impressions of Nature, p. 52). Of particular interest in Neueste Anweisung is the illustration on the title page depicting the press Martius devised, and the work also includes a history of nature printing (based on that of Beckmann) and a list of subscribers.

• ...Nebst einigen abgedrukten Pflanzen. Wetzlar: Winkler (for the author), 1784.

  Octavo. Original grey wrappers. 4 folding plates, engraving depicting Martius’s press to the title, headpiece and tailpiece. Contemporary inked shelf number “244” to spine. Wrappers foxed and a little creased at the extremities with short closed tears at the ends of the spine, spotting and toning to contents, small square area on the back wrapper which may be an old repair. A very good copy.

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Moore, Harold | Metals and Alloys

• Overview
• Details & Condition

• First edition of this uncommon mid-century children’s book, stylishly illustrated throughout with diagrams depicting atoms and molecules, the microscopic structure of metals and alloys, and industrial processes.

  “The Nuffield Foundation Science Teaching Project operated via sections based at the Project's headquarters at Chelsea College, London, developing content and methods of presentation for teaching science subjects at various levels. The Publications Department produced materials for these projects in physical science, physics, chemistry and biology at different levels. Many were published jointly by Longman and Penguin, with Penguin handling most of the production and design and Longman handling distribution, sales and some editing” (King’s College London archives catalogue, reference GB0100 KCLCA CNU/PBN).

• ...Chemistry Background Books. London & Harmondsworth, Middlesex: for the Nuffield Foundation by Longman/Penguin Books, 1968.

  Sextodecimo. Original limp, plastic coated wrappers printed in grey, black and red. Illustrated throughout. Wrappers a little rubbed and faintly toned, contents fresh. An excellent copy.

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Pagé, Victor W. (ed.) | Henley's ABC of Gliding and Sailflying

• Overview
• Details & Condition

• First UK edition, originally published in the US in the previous year. An attractive copy and uncommon in the jacket.

  The earliest successful glider was created by the British aeronautical designer Sir George Cayley and flown in 1853, initiating a wave of research into both unpowered and powered flight, and gliders had become relatively sophisticated by the time the Wright Brothers flew the first powered aircraft in 1903. It wasn’t until the 1920s, however, that gliding became an organised sport, making this an early popular guide for the beginner. Heavily illustrated, it contains information on the mechanics of flight; the different types of gliders, including powered gliders and water gliders; glider design and construction; and detailed chapters on key components such as brakes, control cables, fuselage, and wing frames.

• London: Chapman & Hall, Ltd., 1931.

  Duodecimo. Original blue cloth, title to spine gilt, publisher’s logo to upper bard in blind. With the dust jacket. Photographic frontispiece, illustrations throughout the text. Ownership inscription dated 1943 to the front free endpaper. Cloth very lightly rubbed at the extremities but otherwise bright and fresh, faint partial toning to the endpapers, faint spotting to the endpapers and edges of text block. An excellent copy in the rubbed and tanned jacket with some spots and marks and an over-price ticket to the spine panel.

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Patterson, Flora W. & Vera K. Charles | Mushrooms and Other Common Fungi

• Overview
• Details & Condition

• First edition of this well-illustrated guide to mushroom identification for the amateur collector.

  The first female mycologist to work at the United States Department of Agriculture, Flora Patterson (1847-1928) exhibited “the tenacity, audacity, and perspicacity of a true scientific visionary” (Reynolds, “Flora Patterson”, Women in Microbiology, p. 219). She initially studied fungi as a childhood hobby, then attended several universities as a non-traditional student, taking a plant pathology course at Iowa State and completing her education at Radcliffe College, from where she was able to work in the Harvard Grey Herbarium.

  At the USDA Patterson “published on edible and poisonous mushrooms and on fungus diseases of economic importance, working and publishing with the mycologist Vera Charles” (Ogilvie, p. 990). Patterson directed the US National Fungus Collections for nearly thirty years, growing it from 19,000 to 115,000 specimens. She was in charge of identifying fungal diseases of agricultural importance, and made numerous important contributions in this area, including the identification of chestnut blight and pineapple rot. Her involvement in Japan’s gift of cherry trees to the US led to the passage of the Plant Quarantine Act of 1912.

• Washington D.C.: Government Printing Office for the United States Department of Agriculture, 1915.

  Octavo. Original cream wrappers printed in black. 38 plates from photographs. Wrappers faintly toned, mild dampstain affecting the lower corner of the wrappers and text, with some abraded areas where the corners of the leaves have stuck together, not generally affecting text. Very good condition.

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Pauling, Linus | The Architecture of Molecules

• Overview
• Details & Condition

• First edition, first printing of this classic of science illustration.

  Linus Pauling was one of the 20th century's most versatile scientists, making important contributions in chemistry, physics, and biology & physiology. He had a special interest in molecular structures, and his 1954 Nobel Prize in chemistry cited his "research into the nature of the chemical bond and its application to the elucidation of the structure of complex substances" (Nobel prize biography). The similarly versatile scientific illustrator Roger Hayward first worked with Pauling in 1946, when he illustrated Pauling's General Chemistry, the first of four books on which the two collaborated. But it was this volume, conceived as an introduction to molecular structure for older children, which was the most successful. It comprises 57 beautiful full-page colour illustrations, from the simple two-atom hydrogen molecule to complex structures such as polypeptide chains and hemoglobin, alongside Pauling's clear and concise explanations of the concepts underlying chemical bonding and how a molecule's structure affects its function. A very attractive copy.

• San Francisco & London: W. H. Freeman and Company, 1964.

  Quarto. Original grey cloth, titles to spine and upper board in orange and black, colour pictorial endpapers. With the dust jacket. Colour illustrations throughout. Some dark grey spotting of the cloth. A very good copy in the jacket that is lightly rubbed and creased at the extremities with some small splits and light spotting on the spine panel and lower panel.

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Payne, Nellie M. | “Freezing and Survival of Insects at Low Temperature"

• Overview
• Details & Condition

• The uncommon offprint of the doctoral thesis of entomologist and agricultural chemist Dr. Nellie Maria de Cottrell Payne (1900 - 1990). WorldCat locates only nine copies, mainly in central European institutions, as well as the University of Minnesota, Cornell, and McGill.

  Payne was born in Colorado and obtained her graduate degrees at Kansas State Agricultural College and the University of Minnesota. Her research encompassed “insect and invertebrate cold hardiness, pigments of hydroids, and the physiology and mathematics of population growth... Following the completion of her doctorate, she was appointed as a National Research Foundation Fellow at the University of Pennsylvania until 1927, spending a brief time afterwards at the University of Vienna and University Berlin as a research investigator. She then returned to the University of Minnesota as a lecturer in entomology from 1933 to 1937. Payne also spent numerous summers in the late 1920s and early 1930s at the Woods Hole Marine Biological Laboratory in Massachusetts, publishing primarily on the hibernation and low temperature effects of insects and the physiological effects of parasitoids on their hosts. Of her 36 publications, all as sole author, 33 were a result of her research prior to entering industry. In 1937, she began her career in industry as a research entomologist and zoologist with American Cyanamid. In 1957, she accepted a position as a literature chemist for Velsicol Chemical in Chicago, with whom she remained until 1971... In addition to her active membership in ESA, Payne was also a member of the American Chemical Society, the American Society of Zoologists, and the New York Academy of Science. She served as editor and member staff of Biological Abstracts from 1927–1933, and was elected as member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 1921” (Entomological Society of America biography).

• ...A thesis submitted to the faculty of the graduate school of the university of Minnesota in partial fulfillment for the degree of doctor of philosophy.” Reprinted from the Quarterly Review of Biology, Vol. 1, No. 2, April, 1926, pp. 270-282. Baltimore: Quarterly Review of Biology, 1926.

  14 page offprint. Original cream wrappers, titles printed to upper wrapper, stapled. Tiny pencil notation to upper wrapper. Wrappers partially toned and a little rubbed and creased, mild creasing of the top corners of the leaves. An excellent copy.

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Peckham, George W. & Elizabeth G. On the Instincts and Habits of the Solitary Wasps

• Overview
• Details & Condition

• First edition, first printing of both titles, the “Additional Observations” being a presentation copy inscribed, “Mr, Claus H. Shirum [?], compliments of the authors”.

  Authors Elizabeth and George Peckham were entomologists and archnologists who together pioneered the study of jumping spiders; were early proponents of including behaviour in taxonomical analysis; and performed some of the first studies on sexual selection. Elizabeth was the first female science graduate of Vasser, one of Milwaukee’s first librarians, and a suffragist. George obtained a medical degree but chose to teach high school, and in 1880 the Peckhams introduced the first biological laboratory course in an American High school, also incorporating Darwinian concepts in their pedagogy.
  
  Together the Peckhams described 63 genera and 366 species, and one genus, at least twenty species, and a scientific society are named in their honour. Following George’s death in 1914, Elizabeth continued their scientific work and was awarded a PhD by Cornell in 1914. On the Instincts and Habits of the Solitary Wasps is now considered a scientific classic, for both its style and scholarship.

• [Bound together with] “Additional Observations on the Instincts and Habits of the Solitary Wasps” [in] Bulletin of the Wisconsin Natural History Society, vol. 1, no. 2, April 1900. Madison, WI: the state of Wisconsin, 1898.

  Octavo. Contemporary library style binding of black half skiver, black cloth sides, spine gilt in compartments. 14 plates of which 2 are chromolithographs and the 12 are lithographs. Binding rubbed with wear at the corners, spine ends, and hinges, contents toned. A very good copy.

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Pennington, Mary Engle, et al. Paul Mandeville (ed). | Eggs

• Overview
• Details & Condition

• First edition, first printing of this charming set on the biology, economics, and preparation of chicken eggs. Uncommon as a full set.
  
  This copiously illustrated production promotes the US egg and poultry industry to the general reader, and was presumably distributed at the 1933 Chicago World’s Fair, as the spine carries the Fair’s logo. Volume I contains chapters on egg biology, chicken husbandry, safe storage and handling of eggs, and the development and future of the egg industry. Volume II contains chapters on the egg’s place in the modern diet, the different ways eggs contribute to recipes, “practical hints on buying eggs”, and “egg oddities in foreign lands”, concluding with a large selection of recipes for both poultry and eggs.

  Author Mary Engle Pennington (1872-1952) was a pioneer of modern commercial bacteriology and food handling standards. In 1898, shortly after obtaining her doctoral degree, she established her own business performing bacteriological analyses for Philadelphia physicians, and was appointed a lecturer at the Women’s Medical College of Pennsylvania. She then became head of the Philadelphia Health Department’s bacteriological laboratory, “where she devevloped methods of preserving dairy products and standards for milk inspection that came to be employed throughout the country” (Ogilvie, p. 1003).
  
  In 1908 Pennington was appointed chief of the Food Research Laboratory of the Department of Agriculture, supervising its research on food handling and storage for the next eleven years. “During World War I, she devised standards for railroad refrigerator cars; her war work on perishable foods earned her the Notable Service Medal.” Later she entered the private sector and “established her own consulting office in New York City, advising packing houses, shippers, and warehouses on food handling, storage, and transportation, as well as doing original research on frozen foods. Pennington’s early work in devising methods of preventing spoilage of eggs, poultry, and fish, as well as her later research on the freezing of various foods, resulted in many practical techniques for the preparation, packaging, storage, and distribution of perishables. She published her conclusions in technical journals, government bulletins, and magazines” (Ogilvie, p. 1003).

• ...Book 1: Whence Come Our Eggs and Poultry. Book 2: The Best of Food Eggs and Poultry. Chicago: Progress Publications for the Institute of American Poultry Industries, 1933.

  2 volumes (duodecimo). Original blue and silver cloth, titles to spine in blue on silver. Illustrations from photographs and diagrams throughout the text. Mid-century ownership tickets of Miriam E. Lowenberg to each front free endpaper, with an ownership ink stamps of the same to the rear pastedown of volume I and front free endpaper of volume II. Jacket flaps bearing the blurb loosely inserted. Cloth rubbed and worn at the extremities, particularly the corners and hinges. A very good set.

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Piccard, Sophie | Sur les Ensembles de Distances

• Overview
• Details & Condition

• First edition of this significant work on set theory, text unopened and in the original wrappers.

  Author Sophie Piccard (1904-1990) showed great mathematical ability from an early age. She was born and completed her first undergraduate education in Russia, but fled to Switzerland with her parents in 1925. Piccard then completed a second mathematics degree, and obtained her doctoral dissertation on probability at the University of Lausanne. Following her father’s death, she worked as an actuary and then an administrative secretary, but continued doing research, and in 1936 became assistant in geometry to at professor at the University of Neuchâtel. She succeeded to his position in 1938, and from 1943 held the chair of higher geometry and probability theory, becoming the first female full professor in Switzerland. “Her research interests were set theory and group theory. She published papers in other areas as well: function theory, the theory of relations, probability theory, and actuarial science” (Ogilvie, p. 1020).

  “In 1939 Piccard published her book 'Sur les ensembles de distances des ensembles de points d'un espace Euclidean.' If A and B are point sets of a Euclidean space, the distance set of the pair (A,B), denoted by D(A,B), is the set of all numbers d such that there is a pair of points, one in A and the other in B, whose distance is d. Piccard's book made a detailed study of various questions concerning D(A,B). The review of the book in Mathematical Reviews said that 'a few results in the field under investigation are due to Steinhaus, Sierpinski and Ruziewicz, but after chapter I, the results are almost entirely new'" (Biographies of Women Mathematicians, Agnes Scott College website).

• ...Des Ensembles de Points d'un Espace Euclidien. Neuchâtel: Secrétariat de l’Université, 1939.

  Octavo. Original grey wrappers printed in black. Text block unopened. Wrappers tanned along the edges and spine, a little creasing at the edges, small chip at the top of the upper wrapper, contents faintly toned in the margins. An excellent copy.

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Pitt-Rivers, Rosalind & Jamshed R. Tata. | The Thyroid Hormones

• Overview
• Details & Condition

• First edition, first printing of this key work by one of Britain’s leading biochemists. A beautiful copy in the jacket.

  Rosalind Pitt-Rivers earned her PhD in biochemistry in 1939 under the supervision of Sir Charles Harington, whose lab at the National Institute for Medical research she then joined. The Second World War interrupted her career, but in 1950 she returned to Harington’s lab. “This move turned out to be a propitious event in her scientific career. Inspired by Harington's major interest in elucidating the structure of thyroid hormones, she became deeply involved with biochemical research on how what was then thought to be the only thyroid hormone, L-thyroxine (T4), was synthesized in the thyroid gland. In 1951 a young Canadian endocrinologist, Jack Gross, joined Pitt-Rivers as a postdoctoral fellow to discover more about an unidentified iodine-containing compound that he had earlier observed in human and rodent blood. Taking advice from experts in analytical biochemistry at that time working at the NIMR (in particular, A. J. P. Martin, A. T. James, and H. Gordon), Pitt-Rivers and Gross very rapidly identified this unknown compound to be 3,3ʹ,5-triiodothyronine (T3), a report of which was published in The Lancet in 1952. At about the same time a group in Paris at the Collège de France (S. Lissitzky, R. Michel, and J. Roche) identified T3 in the thyroid gland and showed that it was made there as a component of thyroglobulin and secreted into the bloodstream. The following year Gross and Pitt-Rivers were able to demonstrate that a large part of T3 in the blood was derived from T4, and that it was considerably more potent than its precursor, thus establishing T3 to be the principal thyroid hormone. The discovery of triiodothyronine quickly brought Pitt-Rivers international recognition, including her election as a fellow of the Royal Society in 1954” (ODNB).

• ...With a Chapter on Diseases of the Thyroid. New York: Pergamon Press, 1959.

  Octavo. Original burgundy cloth, titles to spine and upper board gilt. With the dust jacket. 3 plates, of which 1 is double-sided. Faint partial toning of the endpapers. An excellent, fresh copy in the jacket that is lightly rubbed along the extremities with light toning of the spine panel.

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Platt, Julia B. | Studies on the Primitive Axial Segmentation of the Chick.

• Overview
• Details & Condition

• A rare and important early offprint by one of the first female neuroscientists, with the tipped-in compliments slip of the Alexander Aggasiz, ichthyologist and long-time assistant at the Harvard Museum, which had been founded by his father Louis Aggasiz. WorldCat locates only four institutional copies of this offprint, at the British Library, Bonn, Strasbourg, and Leipzig.

  Julia Platt (1857-1935) was raised and completed her undergraduate education in Vermont. “Following her degree, she managed to acquire an unusually thorough training in experimental embryology through advanced graduate studies in both American and German universities. She was willing to seek out important scientists with whom to study... She published research on embryological segmentation of head segments of chick embryos, amphioxus, and other vertebrates” (Ogilvie, p. 1031).

  Platt travelled to Europe and became only the second woman admitted to the University of Freiberg. She studied at a number of research centres, including the Naples zoological station and the University of Munich, and completed her PhD on embryological segmentation under August Weismann in 1898. Though Platt was unable to obtain an academic position on her return to the United States, her work “proved to be very stimulating and widely discussed, although its challenges to some aspects of the germ layer theories of the time also made it controversial... During her graduate studies, she published a total of twelve papers, many of which are still cited and evaluated today” (Ogilvie, p. 1031).

• ...With Two Plates. [Offprint from] Bulletin of the Museum of Comparative Zoölogy, at Harvard College. Vol. XVII. No. 4. Cambridge: for the Museum, July 1889.

  20 page offprint, quarto. Original grey wrappers printed in black, hidden staples. 2 folding plates. Shelf number ticket and museum ink stamp to upper wrapper. Vertical crease from folding affecting the wrappers and contents, wrappers rubbed and chipped along the edges, where they are also a little toned. Contents unopened. Very good condition.

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Verndasky, Vladimir I. | The Biosphere

• Overview
• Details & Condition

• First English language edition, first printing of this key work in the history of ecology, originally published in Russian in 1926. A beautiful copy.

  Author Vladimir Vernadsky (1863-1945) remains little known in the West, but he was a leading Russian geochemist whose main contributions to science were expanding on and popularising the concept of the biosphere and adding to it his theory that plant, animal, and human life had a significant influence on the Earth’s geology and chemistry. This was controversial, as most scientists believed that human and animal activity could not affect the planet’s atmosphere or geological processes.

  “A bare handful of scientists thought otherwise. The deepest thinker was the Russian geochemist Vladimir Vernadsky. From his work mobilizing industrial production for the First World War, Vernadsky recognized that the volume of materials produced by human industry was approaching the scale of geological processes. Analyzing biochemical activities, he concluded that the oxygen, nitrogen, and C02 that make up the Earth’s atmosphere are put there largely by living creatures. In the 1920s he published works arguing that living organisms constituted a force for reshaping the planet comparable to any physical force. beyond this he saw a new and still greater force coming into play: intelligence, Vernadsky’s visionary pronouncements about humanity as a geological force were not widely read, however, and struck most readers as nothing but romantic ramblings” (Weart, The Discovery of Global Warming, pp. 14-15).

  This edition, the first complete publication of The Biosphere in English, is fully annotated and includes a foreword by thirteen scientists and historians, including the prominent biologist Lynn Margulis (1938-2011), who made the important discovery that bacterial organelles such as mitochondria were originally free-living bacteria.

• ...Foreword by Lynn Margulis [et al]. Introduction by Jacques Grinevald. Translated by David B. Langmuir. Revised and Annotated by Mar A. S. McMenamin. New York: Copernicus, Spring-Verlag, 1998.

  Quarto. Original quarter black cloth over red boards, titles to spine in metallic blue, black endpapers with white text. With the dust jacket. A little very mild rubbing and a small spot to the jacket. A superb copy in excellent condition.

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Watson, Hewett Cottrell | Topographical Botany

• Overview
• Details & Condition

• First edition, presentation set inscribed by the author on each title, “Mary Edmonds from the Author, H. C. W. 1873” and “Mary Edmonds from the Author, June 24th 1874”.

  Inspired by the work of Alexander von Humboldt, Hewett Cottrell Watson (1804-1881) became Victorian Britain’s leading phytogeographer, and his research contributed to Charles Darwin’s Origin of Species. “Watson's major botanical endeavour was producing several versions of a work first entitled Outlines of the Geographical Distribution of British Plants (1832); it reached its most extensive form as Cybele Britannica, or, British Plants, and their Geographical Relations (4 vols., 1847–59). Volume four contains his most detailed phytogeographical conclusions. After publishing several supplements, he summarized his data in Topographical Botany: being Local and Personal Records towards shewing the Distribution of British Plants (2 vols., 1873–4). He was working on a second edition of it when he died; it was completed by John G. Baker and William W. Newbould (1883)” (ODNB). Watson was also responsible for the foundation of botanical exchange clubs and the publication of the London Catalogue of British Plants, which amassed the contributions of thousands of amateur and professional botanists across Britain.

• ...Being Local and Personal Records Towards Shewing the Distribution of British Plants Traced Through the 112 Counties and Vice-Counties of England and Scotland. Thames Ditton: for private distribution, 1873 & 74.

  2 volumes, octavo. Original green cloth, titles to spine and upper board gilt, yellow coated endpapers. Map. Corners and edges bumped, dampstains to both lower boards, small area of dampstain to edge of upper board of volume II, occasional light spotting to contents and edges of text block of volume II. A very good set.

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[Blanchard] Cobb, Frieda | A Case of Mendelian Inheritance Complicated by Heterogametism

• Overview
• Details & Condition

• The uncommon offprint of the dissertation of geneticist and scientific administrator Frieda Blanchard, née Cobb (1889-1977), the first scientist to demonstrate Mendelian inheritance in a reptile.

  Cobb’s father, Nathan Augustus Cobb, was a pioneering plant pathologist who involved his daughters in his work, particularly in their home laboratory. “Frieda developed an enthusiasm for science and a love for plants and animals. In Hawaii, where her father studied the diseases of sugar cane, Frieda worked in the laboratory he organised” (Ogilvie p. 141). She attended Radcliffe College and completed her bachelor’s at the University of Illinois in 1916.

  “In the fall of 1916, after a summer helping her father with nematode research at Woods Hole, Massachusetts, Frieda Cobb moved to Ann Arbor, Michigan, at the request of Harley Harris Bartlett, director of the University of Michigan Botanical Gardens, and a pioneer in plant genetics. There she became not only his graduate student but also, in 1919, the assistant director of the gardens. Together, Bartlett and Cobb developed the gardens as a major center for Oenothera (evening primrose) research as they tried to solve some of the puzzles in the newly developing science of genetics. Cobb earned her doctorate in 1920 with a study of Mendelian inheritance in certain strains of Oenothera. Because Bartlett was often away from Ann Arbour, Cobb became the active administrator of the gardens, maintaining facilities for scientific research and an atmosphere conducive to such research. That arrangement continued until the 1950s when both retired” (Ogilvie, p. 141).

  Cobb married the herpetologist Frank N. Blanchard in 1922, and they worked together on the garter snake, with Frieda concentrating on genetics. “Their work, carried on over many years, provided the first demonstration of Mendelian inheritance in a reptile” and when Frank died in 1937, Frieda “continued their work as well as her other research and raised their three children” (Ogilvie. p. 141).

• ...and Mutation in Oenothera Pratincola. A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy at the University of Michigan. [Offprint from] Genetics Vol. 6, No. 1, January 1921. Genetics, 1921.

  44 page offprint. Original grey wrappers printed in black, hidden staples. Contemporary pencilled note to the upper wrapper. Ink stamp of the University of Bonn on the verso of the title. Wrappers very lightly rubbed and toned, with small discoloured spots from the staples. Excellent condition.

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[Seaweed] | An exceptional Victorian seaweed album

• Overview
• Details & Condition

• A sumptuous, mid-19th century seaweed album, unusually finely bound and containing eighty specimens.
  
  Most seaweed albums we have handled have been simply bound in skiver or paper-covered blank books. This example, however, is in green morocco with elaborate gold tooling and attractive, gilt patterned endpapers. The specimens are among the most beautiful we have seen, delicate, artfully arranged, and retaining their colour and texture, and they represent an unusually varied selection of species. Each one is individually mounted on white card, and hand-labelled with its scientific name and the location where it was collected. Most were found in Cumbria, at Roa and Piel Islands off the Furness Peninsula, as well as the mainland beaches of Roose, Baycliff, Aldingham, Bardsea, Saltcoats, Rampside, Flimby, and Maryport. Also represented are nearby Ayrshire in southwest Scotland, as well as more exotic locales: the Isle of Mann, Gibralter, Tangier, and one location given only as “Mediterranean”.

  Seaweed collecting was, together with other types of natural history collecting and scrapbooking, a popular occupation for young women during the Victorian era. Inspired in part by the Romantic Movement's reverence for nature, it was considered a wholesome way for women to engage with the outdoors, and it also functioned as a social accomplishment indicating one's suitability for marriage and family life.

  Nature was at the centre of the Victorian domestic imagination, and "one reason for the appearance of various representations of the natural world in the parlour. was a continuing apprehension of the world as beautiful - or at least a continuing prestige attached to those who were sensible of that beauty" (Logan, The Victorian Parlour, p. 142). Nature was inextricably tied to religious and moral edification, with amateur collectors "drawn to the study of the natural world as a culturally approved form of recreation. seen as aesthetically pleasing, educational and morally beneficial, since [nature] lifted the mind to a new appreciation of God" (Logan, p. 144).

  "Queen Victoria as a young girl made a seaweed album; later in the century, materials for such an album could be purchased at seaside shops like that of Mary Wyatt in Torquay, who specialized in natural souvenirs" (Logan, p. 124). "In the late 19th Century, the books Sea Mosses: A Collector's Guide and An Introduction to the Study of Marine Algae by A. B. Hervey outlined how to properly press and mount various types of algae. The tools needed are a pair of pliers, scissors, a stick with a needle in the end, at least two 'wash bowls,' botanist's 'drying paper,' or some kind of blotting paper, cotton cloth, and finally cards to mount the specimens on. Pliers and scissors are used to handle the specimens and cut away any extraneous, 'superfluous' branches, and the needle is used like a pencil so that the plant can be moved around with relative ease to show the finer details. The drying and pressing process consists of layering the mounting papers with various types of blotting cloth and additional paper topped with weights; in this case the weights suggested by Hervey are 50 lbs. worth of rocks found by the seashore. Most seaweed in this case will adhere to the mounting board via gelatinous materials emitted from the plant itself" (Harvard University, Mary A. Robinson online exhibition).

• United Kingdom, mid-19th century.

  Tall quarto (288 x 227 mm). Contemporary green morocco rebacked with the original spine laid down, spine elaborately gilt in compartments, elaborate gilt rules and rolls to boards, cornerpieces, gilt turn-ins and patterned endpapers, all edges gilt. 24 leaves of green paper with 80 specimens mounted on white paper inserts of various sizes, each labelled with scientific name and location in manuscript, tissue guards. Rebacked as noted above, small repairs to corners, binding rubbed and scuffed, occasional light spots and toning of contents, one specimen lacking. Very good condition.

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