Evolution, The Modern Synthesis
Lons: George Allen & Unwin, 1942.
First Edition. Hardcover. Near fine in a good dust jacket. 645 pp, bound in original green cloth with gilt spine lettering. Brief gift inscription dated Christmas, 1942, on front free endpaper, minor staining to bottom edge of text block (not affecting interior), else a fine copy. In a moderately soiled but complete original dust jacket. "Evolution: the Modern Synthesis (1942), was an expansion of [Huxley's] 1936 British Association address 'Natural selection and evolutionary progress'. The title of the book linked the author's name with the term 'synthesis', and thus with this important phase in the development of evolutionary biology, for it was in the thirties that the new knowledge of the genetics of populations and of mutation were being brought into productive union with the doctrine of natural selection....The text is packed with information, and although Huxley had trained and carried out research as a zoologist, the work is noteworthy for the breadth of treatment and balance between the plant and animal kingdoms. Attending to plants as well as animals was just one example of the way in which his eclectic approach allowed him to adopt an open position on the significance of different sources of variation and the extent of gradualist evolution and by implication the extent of the creative action of natural selection" (ODNB).
Item #24059
Price: $300.00