The Different Forms of Flowers on Plants of the Same Species. With Illustrations.

London: John Murray, 1877. First edition. Very Good. Octavo (20 cm); viii, 352, 32 (ads) pages. Ads dated March 1877. Original green cloth, titled in gilt on spine. Foxing to endleaves and to fore edge, else clean and unblemished.

In his eye-opening re-appraisal of Darwin's botanical books, Oliver Sachs wrote that Darwin's botanical studies were "engines of war, great missles of evidence lobbed at the skeptics of his theory of natural seledtion" (The River of Consciousness). Sachs observes that the botanical studies are "even more overwhelming" than the author's magnum opus, The Origin of Species, in its presentation of natural seledtion as the basic fact of evolution. Sachs singles out this work, The Different Forms of Flowers on Plants of the Same Species, as particularly significant, in that it explores the theme of co-evolution between two or more interdependent species, such as elongated flowers developing together with insects capable of pollinating them with a long proboscus.