Item #1215 Memoir on a portion of the lower jaw of the Iguanodon, and on the remains of the Hylæosaurus and other Saurians, discovered in the Strata of Tilgate Forest, in Sussex (Mantell, pp. 131-151) WITH Additional Note on the Contraction of Voluntary Muscle in the Living Body (Bowman pp. 69-72) WITH On a Cycle of Eighteen Years in the Mean Annual Height of the Barometer in the Climate of London, and on a Constant Variation of the Barometrical Mean According to the Moon’s Declination (Howard, pp. 277-280) in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London Volume 131, 1841. Gideon Mantell, William Bowman, Luke Howard.

Memoir on a portion of the lower jaw of the Iguanodon, and on the remains of the Hylæosaurus and other Saurians, discovered in the Strata of Tilgate Forest, in Sussex (Mantell, pp. 131-151) WITH Additional Note on the Contraction of Voluntary Muscle in the Living Body (Bowman pp. 69-72) WITH On a Cycle of Eighteen Years in the Mean Annual Height of the Barometer in the Climate of London, and on a Constant Variation of the Barometrical Mean According to the Moon’s Declination (Howard, pp. 277-280) in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London Volume 131, 1841

London: The Royal Society, 1841. 1st Edition. Full volume 1st editions of 3 important papers, MANTELL’S 2nd MAJOR PAPER ON THE IGUANODON; BOWMAN’S’s CLASSIC PAPER ON THE PHYSIOLOGY OF MUSCLES; & ONE OF A NUMBER OF LUKE HOWARD’S PAPERS “WHICH TRANSFORMED THE SCIENCE OF METEOROLOGY” (Wikipedia).

MANTELL’S PAPER: Gideon Mantell “is best known for his discovery of the first dinosaur ever to be described properly – a momentous event” (Dictionary of Scientific Biography, IX, 87). Mantell published three major papers on his Iguanodon, the first in 1825, the 1941 paper offered here, and the last, the 1848 paper inclusive of the most complete description.

In 1822, Mantell discovered the teeth of a giant reptile in West Sussex. “In 1825 he was shown teeth of the modern lizard iguana, and he saw that his fossil teeth were similar but much larger. That same year, Mantell announced, described, and named his discovery in the first of the 3 papers. It was eventually pointed out that the teeth resembled those of an iguana, only much larger, which suggested to Mantell that he call his creature an Iguanodon” (Linda Hall Library).

By 1841 and in the paper offered, Mantell had begun to conceptualize the iguanodon as “a gigantic herbivorous reptile bulky and massive as an elephant… [its] limbs must have been proportional to its body…the less bulky forelegs were adapted for seizing plants and pulling down branches” (Dean, Mantell, 233). Mantell’s “bold but well-considered speculations animated Iguanodon with a degree of physiological and behavioral specificity unmatched by any other saurian then known” (DSB). In a startling finale to the 1848 paper, Mantell reidentified a specimen presented in the 1841 paper as part of the lower jaw of a young iguanodon.

BOWMAN PAPER: William Bowman published two “classical descriptions[s] of the striated muscle,” this being the second (Garrison & Morton 542). We offer the 1840 paper, the first, separately. It is ““the foundation of the current understanding of striated muscle structure… Bowman succeeded in establishing the true architecture of striated muscle fibres…explaining and eradicating alternative erroneous concepts in the process - but also in correctly describing the basic microstructural changes associated with contraction” (Frixione, Muscle microanatomy and its changes during contraction, JMRC, 2006).

HOWARD PAPER: “Howard has been called ‘the father of meteorology’ because of his comprehensive recordings of weather in the London area from 1801 to 1841”, these being the last of those works, and his nomenclature system for clouds (WP). In this paper, Luke Howard, “truly states, ascertained beyond controversy, that a periodical revolution takes place, bringing alternate warmth and coldness through successive trains of seasons in our variable climate” (ibid). Howard had written two other accounts of the climate of London, in 1818 and 1833. In those, “Howard gave a view of the series of changes embraced by the cycle which it is his present object [in the paper offered] to illustrate, on the basis which his observations then seemed to present, of alternate periods of seven of heat. He then admits…the probability of spaces between these successive periods not agreeing with this rule and answering to the ‘intercalations’ of an imperfect calendar. Having since pursued the subject further, he finds ‘these spaces or interposed years to be necessary parts of the scheme at large, which now resolves [he shows in this paper] into a cycle of 18 years in which our seasons appear to pass through their extreme changes in respect of warmth and cold, wet and dryness” (ibid; Howard, 277). Item #1215

CONDITION: London. Full volume, complete. 27 plates. Faded stamp on the title page. Handsomely rebound in aged calf. 5 raised bands at the spine. Red and black gilt-lettered morocco spine labels. Bright & clean. Fine.

Price: $625.00