The Origin of Species, By Means of Natural Selection, Or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life

6th edition (twelfth thousand). xxii, 458pp, complete with one fold-out diagram. In green cloth-covered boards, decorated with blind rules, gilt titles on spine. Brown endpapers. 12mo. Boards rubbed at edges and joints, a little more markedly on corners, some light fraying a spine ends. Front endpaper cracked along gutter. Previous owner's name in pencil on half title. First and last few pages show a little tanning in margins, rear free endpaper has some neatly pencilled notes on obverse, else internally neat and clean. The sixth edition of Origin of Species has various corrections and additions to the first edition (1859), supporting Darwin's then revolutionary theories that different species of living things evolved by means of natural selection; and that the process he called natural selection was the means by which species adapted and changed over time. The last edition to be published in Darwin's life time, this was the first edition to use the term 'evolution'. It is also the first edition to include Darwin's counter argument to George Jackson Mivart's On the Genesis of Species which had been published a year earlier arguing broadly against natural selection.