The geology of the south-east of England. Presentation copy

Mantell, Gideon (1790-1852). The geology of the south-east of England. [iii]-xix, 415pp., lacking half-title. Lithographed frontispiece and 5 plates (1 folding), folding colored map, text illustrations. London: Longman, Rees, Orne, Brown, Green & Longman, 1833. 213 x 132 mm. 19th century half calf, marbled boards, all edges gilt, rebacked preserving original spine, light edgewear. Plates somewhat foxed, map backed with linen, otherwise very good. Presentation copy, with Mantell's autograph inscription to Capt. [Proby Thomas] Cautley (1802-71) bound in before the frontispiece: "To Capt. Cautley as a mark of the high respect of the author for his important researches in Paleontology, & in gratitude for Captain Cautley's valuable addition to the Author's Museum. Brighton Feby. 14, 1837."

First Edition. Announcing the discovery of Hylaeosaurus, the third dinosaur specimen to be discovered, and the first known specimen of the Ankylosauria. Mantell, a British obstetrician and enthusiastic amateur paleontologist, had discovered the first true dinosaur, the Iguanadon, in 1822 in the British county of Sussex. "In 1832 Mantell discovered the first strongly armored group of dinosaurs. He described this fossil, which he named Hylaeosaurus, in The Geology of the South-east of England. . . . Meanwhile, Buckland in 1824 had described the remains of the large carnivorous dinosaur Megalosaurus from the Jurassic near Oxford. Thus the first three dinosaurs to be known, the Iguanadon, the Megalosaurus, and the Hyaelosaurus, each belonged to a quite distinct group, later called Ornithopoda, Theropoda, and Ankylosauria, respectively" (Dictionary of Scientific Biography).

Mantell presented this copy of his Geology of the South-east of England to Proby Thomas Cautley, a British engineer and paleontologist who spent most of his career in India. Cautley was the first to find fossils in the Siwalik range of the Himalayas and, together with Hugh Falconer, he amassed and classified an enormous collection of sub-Himalayan fossils that he later presented to the British Museum. Cautley had evidently contributed a fossil specimen to Mantell's own museum, which he had established in his house in Brighton (the museum took over Mantell's entire residence, and his wife and children were forced to seek housing elsewhere!).