We’re celebrating new publications, exciting exhibitions, and the festive holiday season with another round of digital jigsaw puzzles. This collection of images highlights a few winter favorites as well as more »
Tag: Mark Catesby
In the early eighteenth century, English naturalist Mark Catesby set foot in a New World. After spending the better part of ten years, spread across two separate trips, exploring and more »
Congratulations to Leslie Overstreet! The Catesby Commemorative Trust’s The Curious Mr. Catesby: A “Truly Ingenious” Naturalist Explores New Worlds book has been awarded the 2016 Annual Literature Award by the Council of Botanical and Horticultural Libraries. Leslie, Curator of Natural-History Rare Books in the Joseph F. Cullman 3rd Library of Natural History, authored the chapter titled “The Publication of Mark Catesby’s The Natural History of Carolina, Florida, and the Bahama Islands.”
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he Smithsonian Libraries, in conjunction with the National Museum of Natural History, will host a series of lectures on both Mark Catesby’s art and science on November 6.
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.
The second Sunday in March is Buzzard Day. The Libraries’ Galaxy of Images makes it easy to celebrate, wth two wonderful plates by Mark Catesby and François-Nicolas Martinet featuring buzzards.
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 »