De generis humani varietate nativa. Praemissa est epistola ad virum perillustrem Iosephum Banks.

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8vo (165 x 103 mm), xliv, 326, [10] pp., including half title (misbound after title), 2 engraved folding plates and a large colored folding map bound at end (Charte zur Übersicht der vorzüglichsten Varietäten des Menschen nach dem Blumenbachschen Systeme). Contemporary marbled paper card boards with two paper labels to flat spine lettered in manuscript. Internally with very minor spotting and toning of text and minor spotting of plates. Provenance: Friedrich Wilhelm Sporleder (1787-1875), German botanist and senior civil servant of the comital government of Wernigerode (ownership inscription to pastedown); Bibliothek des Fürsten zu Stolberg Wernigerode (ink stamp on title page). A handsome, crisp copy. ---- PMM 219 (first ed.); NLM/Blake 51; Wellcome II, p.183; Garrison-Morton 156; Norman 250 (first ed.). - The third and most important edition. The first edition was a dissertation printed for private distribution only and is practically unobtainable. "Blumenbach was the founder of anthropology. he classified mankind into four races, based on selected combinations of head shape, skin colour and hair form. his famous terms 'Caucasian, Mongolian, Ethiopian, American, and Malayan' were not used until the third edition of 1795" (Garrison-M. 156). Blumenbach 'was preceded by Tyson and Linné who had prepared the ground for his studies by relating man to the order of the primates. Linné had distinguished four races of man chiefly by the color of their skin. From these premises Blumenbach was able to develop the thesis that all living races are varieties of a single species, homo sapiens, and that their differences were small compared with those between man and the nearest animal; "innumerable varieties of mankind run into each other by insensible degrees". It is not surprising therefore that Blumenbach was opposed to the practice of slavery and the then current belief in the inherent savagery of the colored races' (PMM). The inserted large folding map is not original part of this books. It was published in Allgemeines Archiv für Ethnographie und Linguistik, vol. 1, 1808. N° de ref. del artículo 002026

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