Zoologie géographique. Premier article l’homme

[n.p.]: De l’Imprimerie française de Cassel, 1784. FIRST EDITION. Small woodcut printer’s device on title, woodcut head- and tailpieces. Contemporary calf-backed pasteboards, spine worn with very small piece missing at foot, otherwise an excellent copy printed on very thick paper. Ownership inscription dated 1817 on fly-leaf. First edition in French, first printed in Leipzig in 1778. Zimmermann (1743-1815) was a professor of natural history in Bronswik and ranked among the important thinkers of his era, best remembered for authoring “the first textbook of zoogeography, containing the first world map showing the distribution of mammals” (see Garrison-Morton, 145.53).

Zimmermann here discusses his theory on the unity of origin of mankind. For him, the primitive man was white, with brown hair and lived in a high place of Central Asia. There he multiplied, families descended from it and emigrated in several directions where they formed colonies. In these new habitats, the influence of the climate gradually modified their physical characteristics: the color of their skin, their size, etc... This dissemination took place in four currents, explaining the four groups of Linnaeus.

Poggendorff, II, pp. 1411-1412; see Blake, p. 499 and Wood, Vertebrate Zoology, p. 641 listing the German first edition.