Charles Darwin - L’Origine des espèces - 1882

Charles Darwin – On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Struggle for Existence in Nature.
French translation of the definitive sixth English edition by Edmond Barbier. Paris, C. Reinwald, libraire-éditeur, 1882.
Reference French edition of one of the most important scientific works in the history of science. Darwin lays out his theory of descent with modification, of natural selection, of the variation of species and of the struggle for existence, which would profoundly transform the understanding of living beings.
The copy is preserved in an elegant old cloth binding, dark green in color, with the title, the author’s name, the publisher’s name and gilded decorative ornaments on the back. The front cover presents a sober blind-tooled decoration. Among the especially remarkable elements is the fold-out diagram of the “Divergence of Characters,” printed on a large fold-out sheet. This graphical representation illustrates the progressive divergence of species and is one of the most emblematic visual passages of the work.