Fishes, living and fossil. An outline of their forms and probable relationships.

New York, NY, MacMillan, 1895. 8vo (21.6 x 14.8 cm). xiv, 300 pp., frontispiece, 345 text figures. Original dark blue buckram. Spine with gilt title. Top edge gilt. = A surprisingly scarce well-illustrated monograph by the American ichthyologist and expert in medieval swords, Bashford Dean (1867-1928) who among zoologists is perhaps best known for his Bibliography of Fishes (see the self-reference, below). Provenance: the small stamp, on the free front endpaper recto, of the British evolutionary embryologist Sir Gavin Rylands de Beer (1899-1972) "He was director of the Natural History Museum, London, president of the Linnean Society of London, and a winner of the Royal Society's Darwin Medal for his studies on evolution" (Wikipedia). According to Stephen Jay Gould, "In a series of remarkable books that established the synthetic theory of evolution, Gavin de Beer's Embryology and evolution was the first and the shortest (1930; expanded and retitled Embryos and ancestors, 1940; 3rd ed 1958). In 116 pages de Beer brought embryology into the developing orthodoxy. for more than forty years, this book has dominated English thought on the relationship between ontogeny and phylogeny"; bookplate of the Monica Library on the front pastedown, cloth partly split at rear hinge and worn at spine ends, otherwise a very good, clean copy. Rare. Dean I, p. 308.