Omphalos : An Attempt to Untie the Geological Knot.

John Van Voorst. London. 1857. First edition, first issue.. pp. xiii, (i), 376, (vi) Advertisement. 56 woodcut text illustrations, 5 signed by Gosse. Original grey-green cloth, possibly recased but with early end-papers, the cloth much faded, mostly unopened, scattered marginal foxing, EX LIBRIS RICHARD FREEMAN, bibliographer of Charles Darwin and P. H. GOSSE. *FREEMAN & WERTHEIMER #81, Case : a; STAGEMAN #30. According to Gosse's own account, 4000 copies were printed but it sold so slowly that by 1869, only 600 copies had been sold. As Freeman writes - 'It seems undoubted that a considerable number were pulped, and the book is today far scarcer than some of his others which we know to have been printed in much smaller numbers.' Freeman again - 'This is the best known of Gosse's works which consider the conflict between religion and science. In it he attempted to harmonize the great antiquity of the earth which was demanded by uniformitarian geologists with the short chronology which seemed to be required by a strict interpretation of the Bible..... [his Law of Prochronism], widely discussed in the literary and scientific press as well as elsewhere, was ineffectual in gaining converts or in winning back defectors. Nevertheless, Gosse continued to expound it throughout his life.' Stageman p.20 [GEOFFREY LAPAGE]- ' Assuming that most of his readers accepted divine creation in six days, Gosse propounded, as a solution to the controversy, a remarkable theory which showed, with disastrous results to his reputation, how incapable he was of scientific reasoning.'