1st Edition, 1857, extremely rare presentation copy, inscribed by author.
Richard Owen originated in this work the Expanding Earth Theory (EET). The mechanism of the Earth's expansion suggested by Owen is maybe fanciful, but this simple idea of an Earth that expands is revolutionary. Today the EET is a real alternative to plate tectonics. Owen believed that the Earth had changed convulsively, the last convulsion involving an expansion from a tetrahedron to a sphere associated with a large displacement of continents and the ejection of the Moon. ''Richard Owen (1857), is the paper which spawned the tetrahedral theory [developed later by William Lowthian Green], first conceived the birth of the Moon from the Earth and the origin of the Atlantic Ocean as a rift - truly a stimulating trinity’'
Samuel Warren Carey, The Expanding Earth, 1976, p. 234 Owen explained ingeniously the choice of the Earth's tetrahedral pattern: “This approximation, although involving great doubt, is given because it may facilitate the working of the problem which all desire to solve, regarding the earth’s development”. (p. 254, Description of Diagram I)
It is very interesting to read the description, written in his own hand, how from the geological mapping available in 800 sprang his idea of a global solution, from which it will be born the first example of mapping of an expanding Earth:
He [Richard Owen] placed on the floor of a vacant room all the geological maps which he possessed, in their correct relative position. [...] Suddenly flashed upon him the idea that the formations in the Western Continent corresponded in many respects to those in the Eastern; and he fitted, adjusted, and moved them apart and together, until it appeared to him that they must have been detached at some period from each other. The longer he examined the subject, the more this fist conviction was confirmed into a certainty. The next point was to find the law according to which they had separated; and, after much deep and perplexing investigation, he thought he perceived the great truth. [p. 14]
[...] The earth, in some of its former geological epochs, occupied a smaller volume than before the whole of the present superficies emerged from the ocean, and than it did before some of the later successive layers were deposited on the earlier formations. [p. 20]
[...] We see that, in order to bring the hypogene rocks of America and those of northern Europe to form a regular curve; or in order to make the palaeozoic and mesozoic rocks correspond, and finally the tertiary, in each continent, we must not only bring the two continents in actual contact, but we must slide a portion of North America into western Europe, the northern mass of South America on to the great Sandy Desert of Sahara, when sunk, as already remarked, beneath the waters of the ocean, Eastern Asia on to the great Sandy Deserts of Tartary, and Australia on to the submerged Sandy Desert of Arabia. [p. 75]
No other work on the expanding Earth of 800 will contain a mapping practice of such significance… Until further possible new historical findings, it must be agreed priority in the expanding Earth palaeogeography to the cartographic exercise – as unacceptable as it sounds today – of Richard Owen. Considering the closure of the Atlantic and the overlap of South America on Africa, his Earth was to have a radius of not more than 4000 kilometers. After him no more until the next century.''
Giancarlo Scalera: Variable Radius Cartography. Birth and Perspectives of a New Experimental Discipline, Conference, August 2013 1st Edition, New York, W. T. Berry & Co; octavo viii, [9] - 256 p., 3 fold. maps (includ. a large colored map), 4 fold. plts, and fold. tab. A very fine copy in the original embossed brown cloth, with a gild-titled backstrip. Hinges solid, binding firm. The text is clean and free of foxing. Presentation copy inscribed on endpaper: ''Constance Blessing Runcie from her affectionate granduncle The Author'' A sound copy of the scarce New York printing. Ward and Carozzi 1712. Price: USD 1,200,000.00