La Cosmogonia de Moises

Madrid: don Antonio Yenes, 1850. FIRST SPANISH EDITION. With 2 large folding plates, indexes and list of subscribers. Full calf with gilt decorated spines and red and black labels; interior excellent. First Spanish edition, translated from the French, of the author’s attempt to reconcile geological science and specific scientific discoveries with the Biblical story of creation in Genesis. It is in this work that Serres asserts his belief that only cultivated or domestic species are variable. In 1851, however, Serres relaxed his position to include what he called the “gradual perfecting of organized beings” (DSB, p. 318), echoing the direction that Darwin would eventually take in his groundbreaking work on evolution.

Serres (1780-1862) studied in Paris at the Museum d’Histoire Naturelle under Hauy, Cuvier, and Lamarck, where he became friends of Brongniart, Berthollet, and Prevost. He then accepted the first chair of mineralogy and geology in the faculty of science at Montpellier University. His interest in geology, particularly in the caves of southern France, led Serres to suggest the co-existence of humans and extinct large mammals based on fossil evidence discovered there. He is also credited as the first to date fossil bones by their flourine content. Serres held the chair of science for 53 years at Montpellier and at his death left the French state a large number of fossils from the region.

Dictionary of Scientific Biography, XII, pp. 317-318; not listed in Ward & Carozzi.