Milestones of Science Books

FITZROY, Robert; KING, Philip Parker & DARWIN, Charles.

Narrative of the Surveying Voyages of His Majesty's Ships Adventure and the Beagle, between the years 1826 and 1836, Describing Their Examination of the Southern Shores of South America, and the Beagle's Circumnavigation of the Globe. Volume II: Proceedings of the second expedition, 1831-1836, under the command of Captain Robert Fitz-Roy, R.N.

London: Henry Colburn, 1839.

1st Edition. Hardcover. Very Good. Item #003178

Without appendix volume. 8vo (235 x 148 mm). xiv, [2], 694, [2] pp., including half-title, engraved frontispiece, 25 engraved plates with tissue guards (some folding) and 2 folding maps loose in front cover pocket. Original publisher's blue blind-stamped cloth, gilt-lettered spine, yellow endpapers (binding weak, light sunning of spine, corners bumped and scuffed, cloth at foot of spine frayed, some wear to extremities with partially split cloth at hinges, staining and rubbing of boards, front endpaper cracked at fold). Pages untrimmed. Light age-toning of text, some foxing of plates (some stronger), most plates with light waterstain at lower corner, frontispiece loose, short tears and soiling to folds of loose maps, the Chile map with a longer clean tear. Provenance: I. R. Minnitt (bookplate to front pastedown), also loosely attached is a photograph of Charles Darwin. Volume collated complete. ----

Norman 584; Sabin 37826; Freeman 10. FIRST EDITION, second volume only, of what is now universally known as the "Voyage of the Beagle." Under FitzRoy the voyage's objectives extended to include geophysical measurements, and the 'Beagle' was equipped with a variety of instruments and devices, including a lightning conductor and a large number of marine chronometers for measuring longitude. The Admiralty intended the officers to make a chain of exceptionally accurate measurements round the globe. The ship also carried out trials on Beaufort's wind scale" (Desmond, Moore, and Browne). Between 1832 and 1836 the Beagle visited the Cape Verde Islands, Brazil, Montevideo and Buenos Aires, Tierra del Fuego and Cape Horn, the Falkland Islands, Patagonia, the west coast of South America (Chiloé, Valparaíso, Lima), most famously the Galápagos Islands, Tahiti, New Zealand, Australia (Sydney, Tasmania, King George's Sound), the Cocos (Keeling) Islands, Mauritius, Cape Town, and St Helena and Ascension. In all these places Darwin collected a vast numbers of specimens: insects, birds, molluscs, small vertebrates, invertebrates, and plants, meticulously recording their provenance, appearance, and behaviour in his notebooks and diaries. Of these the specimens the greatest and most important by far became the birds from the Galápagos Islands, which the ornithologist and artist John Gould helped Darwin to classify on his return to England. The similarities and differences between the species inhabiting different islands, and between the island species and those of continental South America, gave rise to Darwin's initial thoughts on the possibility of transmutation of characteristics in species, and represents to history the origin of his revolutionary and controversial theories of evolution. - Visit our website for additional images and information.

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