Fauna der Kieler Bucht. 2 vols.
Publisher Information: Leipzig: W. Engelmann, 1865-72.
Möbius, Karl August (1825-1908) and Heinrich Adolph Meyer. Fauna der Kieler Bucht. Erster Band: Die Hinterkiemer oder Opisthobranchia. Zweiter Band: Die Prosobranchia und Lamellibranchia nebst einem Supplement zu den Opisthobranchia. Folio. xxx, 87, [11]; xxiv, 139pp. 50 lithograph plates (40 hand-colored). Leipzig: W. Engelmann, 1865-72. 356 x 257 mm. Original printed boards, cloth backstrips, slight wear and spotting, small split in front inner hinge of Vol. II. Some offsetting onto first and last leaves due to acidic endpapers, minor offsetting from plates, occasional soiling but a very good copy with clean plates. Presentation inscription on the front free endpaper of Vol. II: “Der Herrn Redacteuren des Journal de Conchyliologie, Herrn Crosse und Herrn Dr. Fischer hochachtungsfoll die Verfasser.”
First Edition. Möbius and Meyer’s study of the environment and organisms of the Kieler Bucht (the Bay of Kiel in the southwestern Baltic Sea) is a pioneering work of ecology. “In the introduction to this work [Möbius] set forth a program and methodology for modern ecology. The topography and variations in depth, the plant and animal life of the Kieler Bucht were characterized. The concept of ‘life community’ (‘Lebensgemeinschaft’ or ‘Biocönose’) was introduced, although Möbius did not define it more precisely until 1877” (Dictionary of Scientific Biography). Möbius is credited with coining the term “biocenose” to refer to an ecological community or ecosystem.
“Several features make the general part of Die Fauna der Kieler Bucht unusual. Though faunas were a common type of natural historical writing in the period, most concentrated on listing the animal species in a particular region. Möbius and Meyer went much further, heading toward a tighter connection between a particular set of physical and chemical conditions and the life-forms they supported. In this regard, the identification of so many different faunistic zones in such a small geographic area was innovative. . . . [M]ost discussions of geographic distribution in this period considered large regions of the earth; more local discursive mappings seeking to define, for example, a peculiarly ‘German’ or ‘European’ fauna still normally covered a far broader range than the microlevels attributed to the Kiel Fjord” (Nyhart, Modern Nature: The Rise of the Biological Perspective in Germany [2009], p. 143).
The second volume of this copy bears the authors’ presentation inscription to M. Crosse, the editor of the Journal de Conchyliologie [Journal of Conchology]. The inscription had originally included the name of Dr. Fischer, presumably another editor of the Journal, but this was later crossed out.
Book Id: 42653Price: $4,500.00