DARWIN, Charles; DARWIN, Francis (ed.).

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The Foundations of the Origin of Species, Limited presentation edition, inscribed in a secretarial hand to Lucien Cuénot (1866-1951), a pioneering developer of Mendelian genetics and a skilled promoter of neo-Darwinism. These presentation copies were printed for delegates at the 1909 Darwin celebrations in Cambridge - marking the centenary of the man himself and the half-centenary of his most famous work. The Foundations marks Darwin's first articulation of the theory of evolution. Cuénot, then professor of zoology at the University of Lorraine, had been engaged in Mendelian experiments since the rediscovery of the latter's work in 1900. For this, he is celebrated as the individual responsible for introducing genetics into Franc, and for doing so in an essentially Darwinian framework. Darwin wrote the Foundations in mid-1842, drawing together a series of observations that had been fermenting since he stepped off the Beagle at Falmouth. As Francis Darwin observed, the basic structure of the sketch resembles that of the Origin itself, outlining the Malthusian mechanisms of natural selection and proceeding from analysis of domesticated organisms to those in a state of nature. Following Emma Darwin's death in 1896, the 35-page manuscript was discovered in a cupboard in Down House, where it had been discarded as scrap paper. Francis Darwin, who had co-authored several scientific works with his father, edited the manuscript for presentation. Later in 1909, the University Press publ

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