After emerging as the fittest in various sales last year, high hopes will be placed on a first edition of Charles Darwin's masterwork, On the Origin of Species, when it auctions at Heritage on February 10.
Unquestionably one of the most influential scientific works of the 19th century, On the Origin of Species is also one of the most controversial.
"What dropping the first atomic bomb was to the 20th century, the publication of Darwin's On the Origin of Species was to the 19th century," said the journal Heirs of Hippocrates.
 On the Origin of Species, 1859: bids open at $62.5k |
This first edition from 1859 bears its original ripple-grain cloth and light-brown coated endpapers, with splits and rubs in a few places. It also contains a folding lithographed diagram by William West
With other copies of the work having sold for six figure sums - including one in New York ($170,000) and another which had sat in a bathroom in Oxford for many years (£103,250) - this copy of Origin should be one of the major highlights at Heritage's sale.
Bids will open at $62,500.
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