COPE, E.D. The Primary Factors of Organic Evolution. Chicago: Open Court Publishing Company. 1896.
8vo. Original black cloth, gilt lettering to spine; pp. xvi, 547, [1], [4, ads.], errata slip, numerous illustrations; binding a little rubbed to extremities, internally very clean, very good.
First edition. The main work on evolutionary theory by Edward Drinker Cope (1840-1897), the great fossil hunter and reptile expert, attracted criticism from figures as illustrious as Alfred Russell Wallace with its insistence that evolution is systematic and purposeful: "absolutely untrue [that] the variation which has resulted in evolution has not been multifarious or promiscuous, but in definite directions”(Wallace quoted in Nature 41, 101). Its contentiousness, and Cope's high profile, meant that the book actually played a useful part in the continuing definition of evolutionary theory.
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