Two folding engraved plates. 263, [1] pp. 8vo, orig. German marbled boards (extremities with minor wear & rubbing), orig. label on spine. Halle: Renger, 1812.

First separate edition and the first edition in German. "One of the acknowledged classics of embryology."­Garrison-Morton 471­(describing the publication of the Latin original in the journal of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences in 1768-69). Wolff's description of the formation of the chick's intestine by the rolling inward of the leaf-like layer of the blastoderm was important for proving his theory of epigenesis, and at the same time disproving preformationism. These leaf-like layers were a potent... More