Island Life: Or, The Phenomena and Causes of Insular Faunas and Floras, Including a Revision and Attempted Solution of the Problem of Geological Climates

London: Macmillan and Co, 1880. First Edition. Cloth. Very good +. xvii, [3], 526 p. 24 cm. Frontispiece in partial colour, as well as 25 other maps and diagrams in b&w or sepia. Green cloth hardcover with gold and black impressing. Spine ends a little softened, corners bumped, hinges repaired internally, small label at top of front pastedown. Occasional foxing or staining. A complete book in its original binding.

Alfred Russel Wallace (1823 – 1913) was a British naturalist, explorer, geographer, and biologist, known for independently conceiving, apart from Darwin, the theory of evolution through natural selection. Wallace did extensive fieldwork, first in the Amazon River basin and then in the Malay Archipelago, where he identified the faunal divide now termed the Wallace Line. Island Life has long been considered one of his most important works. In it he studies the influence of the glacial epochs on the distribution patterns of organisms and the characteristics of island biogeography. The book includes history’s first theory of continental glaciation based on a combination of geographical and astronomical causes, a discussion of island classification, and a survey of worldwide island faunas and floras. Anticipating our present concern with both endangered species and vanishing environments, Wallace's ecological studies helped substantiate evolution.