Matching set of 5 volumes, small 8vo, 5 portrait frontispieces, 4 other portrait plates, 9 plates in volume 3, and numerous other illustrations in the text. 32 page list of publisher's adverts at the end of volume 5, that include the works of Charles Darwin. Some foxing in the margins of the portrait plates. Signed and dated 1875 on the half title or the verso of the front fre endpaper of each volume by Horace Darwin and inscribed in volume one by members of Darwin's descendants, "Horace Darwin. Cambridge June 6. 1875. " Later, "Given to H. Darwin by Henry Bradshaw, University Librarian and to his - H.D.'s - grandson, Andrew Barlow, by L.D. (? Leonard Darwin) Xmas 1934." Original teal enpapers (some slightly torn at the top inner corners). 138 x 198 mm. Original publisher's embossed cloth with gilt decoration and titling. Inner hinges split but still holding. Heads and tails of spines slightly worn and faded. Provenance: all these volumes were owned from 1875 by Horace, 5th son of CHARLES DARWIN and the youngest of his seven children who survived to adulthood - Charles Darwin was 66 years old and his son Horace was just 25 in 1875. Having been encouraged to wander around the Welsh hills with his brother, Horace decided he did not want regular education and persuaded his father to have him tutored - he only just made it into Trinity College, Cambridge. Here he learnt physics and mathematics, taking his degree as a Senior Optime in 1874.
Immediately afterwards - when Horace was initially given this set of volumes - he entered the works of Messrs. Easton and Anderson and went through the ordinary apprenticeship course in the shops. While there, for his father, he designed and built his first instrument, a klinostat, for demonstrating responses of a plant to the stimulus of gravitation. At the end of his apprenticeship he returned to Cambridge, and shortly afterwards joined Dew Smith, who was engaged in designing and making instruments for physiological investigations. Michael Foster had recently come to Cambridge, at first as Trinity praelector in physiology, later as professor, and found that for nearly all the apparatus he required, only German instruments
were available. Darwin and Dew Smith became partners and became probably the first technology entrepreneurs of Cambridge when they started a business in 1881 which at a later date grew into the Cambridge Scientific Instrument Company, on Lensfield Road. The legacy of this company and of its founders is profound because it became a founding role-model for other companies to begin commercialising Cambridge University's scientific research. The business history of Cambridge started with Horace Darwin's company in 1881, then progressed to Pye (W.G.Pye left Darwin's company in 1886 to set up his own) and, via Chris Curry (who worked at Pye), continued to Sinclair and then Acorn. Horace Darwin was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society and played an significant role in the development, design and use of scientific Instruments in aeronautics, height-finders and methods of locating aircraft to meet attack by air, gun sights, &c., and was knighted in 1918 for his services to the Great War. Impeccable provenance: acquired directly by myself - Jason Burley - from a descendant of Charles Darwin in 2017, and the books were obtained by me from a family connected house in Wimpole Street that was being disposed of, and that had been passed down to direct descendants via Sir Thomas Barlow (1845-1945), Baron of Wimpole Street. Barlow's son married Charles Darwin's daughter. A photo of the Darwin family home and of my contents clearance appended.