Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London for the Year 1841. Part I-II

London: Richard and John Taylor, 1841. FIRST EDITION. With 6 pages letterpress tables of meteorological data. Contemporary gilt-decorated diapered calf with Greek key border (rebacked), board edges gilt, marbled edges. Without the plates. First edition, the compiled papers given by members of the Royal Society of London. Twenty-one in all, the papers cover light, magnetism, crystallization, optometry, medical physics, meteorology, biology, paleontology, physiology, embryology, and mathematics. In addition to the essays, the text includes a full list of Royal Society fellows, institutions, administration, committees, foreign members, and donors. Each part concludes with a meteorological journal for the previous six months.

The Royal Society was founded in 1660 and is the oldest national scientific institution in the world. It began publishing the Philosophical Transactions in 1665, making it the world’s first scientific journal.

Garrison-Morton, 542 for Bowman’s description of striated muscle (“On the minute structure and movements of voluntary muscles”). Other articles by Airy, Edwarde Sabine, David Brewster, and John Lubbock among others.