SIGNED FIRST BY AMERICAN AUTHORS. General Biology by Sedgwick, William T. and Wilson, Edmund B - 1886

New York: Henry Holt and Co., 1886. First edition.

THE FIRST BIOLOGY TEXTBOOK BY AMERICAN AUTHORS--INSCRIBED BY E.B. WILSON TO LEADING FEMALE PLANT BIOLOGIST.

8 3/4 inches tall hardcover, green cloth binding, blindstamped title to covers, gilt title to spine, bookplate of Effie A. Southworth front pastedown, signed in ink "Miss E.A. Southworth with the compliments of E. B. Wilson" on 2nd printer's blank. Signed "S. L. Bigelow 2439" title page. i-vii, 193 pp, 89 figures in text. Wear to corners, spine ends frayed, front hinge cracked, binding tight, text unmarked, very good minus. LAID IN: 5 1/4 x 8 1/2 inch colored drawing of "micrasterias" on paper (presumably by Southworth).

FROM PREFACE: "Several years ago it was our good fortune to follow as graduate students a course of lectures and practical study in General Biology, under the direction of Professor Martin, at Johns Hopkins University. Since that time we have ever been strongly of the opinion that beginners in Biology should be introduced to the subject by some similar method, following in the main the outlines marked out by Huxley and Martin more than ten years ago. The present work thus owes its origin to the influence of the authors of the "Elementary Biology," our deep indebtedness to whom we gratefully acknowledge. ... After this introductory study the student will be well prepared to take up the one-celled organisms, and can pass rapidly over the ground covered by such works as Huxley and Martin's Practical Biology, Brooks's Handbook of Invertebrate Zoology, Arthur, Barnes and Coulter's Plant Dissection, or the second part of this book, which is well in hand and will probably be ready in the course of the following year." In his Ph.D. dissertation, U of Chicago 2007, A.R. Shapiro indicates that this is the "first biology textbook by American authors".

WILLIAM THOMPSON SEDGWICK (1855 – 1921) was an epidemiologist, bacteriologist, and a key figure in shaping public health in the United States. He was one of three founders of the joint MIT-Harvard School of Public Health in 1913. In 1888, Sedgwick began giving lectures in bacteriology to students in the civil engineering curriculum. His students became the spokesmen and practitioners who brought the principles of public health into the practice of engineering beginning in the 1890s and lasting well into the 20th century. In 1902, he published the groundbreaking book Principles of Sanitary Science and the Public Health, which was a compilation of his lectures from the courses he taught at MIT and a distillation of his experience working in the field.

EDMUND BEECHER WILSON (1856 – 1939) was a pioneering American geneticist, credited as America's first cell biologist. In 1898 he used the similarity in embryos to describe phylogenetic relationships. By observing spiral cleavage in molluscs, flatworms and annelids he concluded that the same organs came from the same group of cells and concluded that all these organisms must have a common ancestor. He was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1902. He also discovered the chromosomal XY sex-determination system in 1905. Wilson adopted the title, The Physical Basis of Life, from that of a lecture by T. H. Huxley in 1868.

PROVENANCE: EFFIE ALMIRA SOUTHWORTH SPALDING (1860–1947), was an American botanist and mycologist, and the first woman plant pathologist hired by the United States Department of Agriculture. Her most important discovery was the 1887 identification of the fungus Colletotrichum gossypii as the cause of cotton cankers, a disease which killed thousands of acres of cotton and was a major economic threat. She earned her bachelor of science degree in 1885 and then accepted a two-year appointment as Fellow in Biology and instructor in botany at Bryn Mawr College. In 1887, Southworth moved to Washington to take on her role as an assistant mycologist for the newly-created Section of Mycology in the USDA.