WALLACE, Alfred Russel. Island Life; Or The Phenomena and Causes of Insular Faunas and Floras; Including a Revision and Attempted Solution of Geological Climates. London: Macmillan and Co. 1880.
8vo. Original green cloth, spine titled in gilt; pp. xx, 526, [2 (advertisements)], hand-coloured lithographic frontispiece map, 2 colour-printed lithographic maps, and 23 wood-engraved maps and illustrations in the text, several maps with partial colouring; neatly rebacked with original spine laid on, light foxing to map, previous owner's bookplate to front pastedown and signature to ffep, very good.
First edition. This is one of Wallace's most significant works, examining the distribution of species across different island groups. The most important principles defined here, governing geographical distribution, are: "1) The former wide extension of all groups now discontinuous, as being a necessary result of evolution; 2) The permanence of the great features of the distribution of land and water on the earth's surface; and 3) The nature and frequency of climatal changes throughout geological time" (p. viii). This is a highly important work of zoogeography, especially in its examination of polar climate and its effect upon the dispersal of species, a study that is still relevant in our age of global warming. In Wallace's recognition of the "interdependence of organic and inorganic nature" he was one of the first scientists to raise the idea of ecology.
BM(NH) V, p. 2257; Wood p. 617.
SKU: 2123994