LYELL. PRINCIPLES OF GEOLOGY, 1833, VOL.3 ONLY, INSCRIBED TO BRODERIP, BOARDS

8vo, first edition of volume 3, PRESENTATION COPY INSCRIBED BY THE AUTHOR ON HALF-TITLE ("W.H. Broderip Esq. | from the author"), partially unopened, colour frontispiece, 5 plates and 93 woodcuts in the text, some underlining, 3pp. of integral advertisements at the end and 8pp. of inserted advertisements (dated April 1833), original boards, spine torn and defective, lower hinge broken, binding worn, some minor spotting to text

W.J. Broderip, presentation inscription from the author on front endpaper

PMM 344; Dibner 96; Grolier/Horblit 70; Milestones of Science 140; Norman 1398.

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INSCRIBED BY LYELL TO HIS CLOSE FRIEND, THE DEDICATEE OF VOLUME 2. The three volumes of Principles of Geology were all published separately by John Murray, in July 1830, 1832 and the spring of 1833 respectively. The author had originally intended the work to be issued in two volumes only, but as stated here in the preface owing to further travels and research he soon decided to extend the work to a third volume. He also takes the opportunity in the preface to confront critics of the first two volumes. The recipient is probably Lyell's close friend, the lawyer, collector and naturalist William John Broderip (1789-1859), member of the Linnean, Geological and Royal Societies, and one of the original fellows of the Zoological Society. Broderip amassed a superb conchological collection subsequently acquired by the British Museum. According to Leonard G. Wilson (Charles Lyell. The Years to 1841: the Revolution in Geology) Broderip was probably one of a select few to whom Lyell showed the manuscript and proof sheets of the Principles. Lyell had shifted his quarters from Crown Office Row to new rooms in 2 Raymond Buildings, Gray's Inn, in the second half of 1831 as he was working on the second volume of the Principles. Lyell commented at the time that Broderip's "library & great collection of recent shells worth some £1000 will enable me to dispense with laying out money some of which would have been necessary otherwise..." (quoted by Wilson, op.cit., p.304). In 1814 Broderip had made the major discovery of the jaw of a small mammal in the Stonesfield Slate, an Oolite formation of Oxfordshire, at a deep level in a very old formation where only reptile fossils had been found hitherto. The jaw was misplaced  by Broderick among his own papers until 1827. Its rediscovery at that point, when Lyell was already working on the Elements, demonstrated the continuity of mammalian life since the oolitic epoch, and for Lyell was conclusive evidence supporting his theory that the order of  living nature as well as the physical world had existed unchanged throughout geological time (op.cit., p. 182).

Volume 2 of the Principles is dedicated to W.J. Broderick ("My Dear Friend | In dedicating this volume to you, I am glad of an opportunity of acknowledging the kind interest which you have uniformly taken in the success of my labours, and the valuable assistance which you have afforded me in several departments of Natural History...")