Island Life: or the Phenomena and Causes of Insular Faunas and Floras Including a Revision and Attempted Solution of the Problem of Geological Climates.
WALLACE, Alfred Russel.
Island Life: or the Phenomena and Causes of Insular Faunas and Floras Including a Revision and Attempted Solution of the Problem of Geological Climates.
First Edition of Alfred Russel Wallace's Island Life or the Phenomena and Causes of Insular Faunas and Floras
London: Macmillan and Co, 1880.
$975.00
In Stock
Item Number: 151846
First edition of Wallace’s classic work on the geographic distribution of animals. Octavo, original publisher’s pebbled green cloth with gilt titles to the spine, vignette of the world stamped in gilt to the front panel, hand-colored frontispiece map showing the distribution of jays with tissue guard, illustrated with various maps and charts. In very good condition, bookplate to the front pastedown. A nice example of this important contribution to evolutionary biology.
English naturalist and biologist Alfred Russel Wallace was one of the two leading figures in the development of the theory of evolution through natural selection alongside Charles Darwin. Darwin and Wallace’s theories differed slightly. Darwin argued that competition between members of the same species led to adaptation, while Wallace asserted that environmental pressures led populations of various locations to diverge. In 1858, Darwin and Wallace published a joint publication: On the Tendency of Species to form Varieties; and on the Perpetuation of Varieties and Species by Natural Means of Selection, the content of which Darwin would develop into his magnum opus, On the Origin of Species, published the following year. Published in 1892, Island Life offers an exhaustive argument for the role of evolution in animal distribution as exhibited in case studies Wallace performed in the Oceanic, Galapagos, and Continental Islands.
