Mark Catesby, a little-known English naturalist, spent 12 years exploring Britain’s colonies in south-eastern North America in the early decades of the 18th century. The book that he published afterwards in London, The natural history of Carolina, Florida and the Bahama Islands (1729-1747), was the first fully illustrated work on the flora and fauna of any part of our continent. In two large folio volumes, he included 220 full-page, hand-colored illustrations of hundreds of species of trees, flowers, birds, fish, reptiles and amphibians, and mammals, most of them the first view Europeans had of North-American plants and animals.
Tag: Leslie Overstreet
Ulisse Aldrovandi (1522-1605) is widely acknowledged as one of the founding fathers of modern natural history, and his books are classics in the field. Two volumes that include illustrations based on the Italian artist Arcimboldo’s superb drawings of animals have been borrowed by the National Gallery of Art for its exhibition Arcimboldo 1526-1593: Nature and fantasy.
This unique copy of Theodore Roosevelt’s African game trails Scrapbook is stuffed to the gills with newspaper clippings, photographs, drawings, letters, invitations, and miscellaneous ephemera from the early 1900s, attached to the pages of the text.
Mark Catesby. The natural history of Carolina, Florida and the Bahama islands: containing the figures of birds, beasts, fishes, serpents, insects, and plants, 1731-43 [1729-48]. Catfish fries have it all more »
Images: Smithson letter of “May 9, Year 4” Bastille Day, a French national holiday, commemorates the storming of the Bastille prison by the populace of Paris to free political prisoners more »
Two entries on today's topic, the Bald Eagle . . . Washington Sea Eagle ca. 1836-1839 John James Audubon Born: Les Cayes, Haiti 1785 Died: New York, New York 1851 more »
This post has been inspired by last month's wonderful post from the Smithsonian Archives, Records and Information Management Month: The Librarian, which features a wider discussion of libraries’ information management more »