Darwin, Charles.

8vo, sixth edition, with additions and corrections, presentation copy from the author with authorial inscription on the half-title "with the kind | regards of the | author", with a 9-line autograph manuscript fragment relating to his dispute with St George Mivart ("If Mivart had read my account of the niata Cattle during Drought in my Journal of Researches, he would have seen there the power of browsing on twigs in a case of life & death - apropos to the giraffe") affixed beneath, original green cloth, photocopy of The Times review of Darwin's work from 26 December 1859 loosely inserted, very spotted, out of shape, binding torn and defective (crudely repaired)

presentation copy from the author, inscription on half-title; M.R. Pryor, pencil ownership signature on endpaper; thence by descent

Freeman 391

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Author's presentation copy of his greatest work, "the most important biological book ever written" (Freeman) and "one of the most important books ever published" (Garrison-Morton). The recipient of this copy was Marlborough Robert Pryor (1848-1930), a contemporary of Darwin's botanist son Francis at Trinity College, Cambridge. Both were students of Natural Science, although Pryor went on to a business career. Pryor's grandson, the zoologist Mark Pryor, married Charles Darwin's great-grand-daughter Sophie Raverat in 1940.

The manuscript fragment affixed to this copy relates directly to Darwin's extended demolition of St George Mivart's Genesis of Species, one of the most important additions to the final, 6th, edition of The Origin of Species. Mivart (a Roman Catholic) believed that an "innate force" rather than random chance drove evolution, arguing, for example, that natural selection could not explain the incipient development of complex organs. Darwin responded in characteristic style, citing an overwhelming number of examples found in nature that supported his argument. The fact that Niata Cattle starve because the projection of their lower jaw makes them unable to chew twigs is introduced on p.177 in support of the point that a slight structural difference (like the slightly elongated neck of the ancestor of the giraffe) can provide a competitive advantage that will tend to be exaggerated over generations.