Re: Catesby

[Patrick Coin <patrick@coinconsult.net>]

At 3:57 PM -0400 6/12/01, Joshua Stuart Rose wrote:
>
>Just found out from the Florida listserv that the library of the
>University of Wisconsin has placed Mark Catesby's classic "The Natural
>History of Carolina, Florida and the Bahama Islands: Containing the
>Figures of Birds, Beasts, Fishes, Serpents, Insects and Plants." Volume I
>is overwhelmingly birds, Volume II everything else. The text is tough to
>read on-line but can apparently be printed, and the pictures are very
>nice in an old-fashioned Audubony kind of way... See
>http://libtext.library.wisc.edu/DLDecArts/

Neat link. The images are zoomable with a little icon on the left, 
which I didn't see at first. When you zoom the text it is pretty 
legible. That is really nifty. There are a couple of different 
facsimile versions of parts of the book, but I have never seen the 
whole thing.

>I assume that the author is for whom Catesby's Trillium, which I saw for
>the first time a month or so ago at TLC's Johnston Mill Preserve, is

Right, also Gentiana catesbei, found in the Sandhills, and Rana 
catesbei, the Bullfrog. There are probably others. The way I 
understand it, Linneaus used Catesby's Natural History to describe a 
bunch of species. I think Alan Feduccia's book on Catesby tells most 
of the story. Title: Catesby's Birds of Colonial America. Author is 
variously listed as Catesby or Feduccia. Hardback is out of print, 
but there was a recent reprint of the softcover, which is still in 
print (?)
-- 

Patrick Coin (patrick@coinconsult.net)
web master (web@newhopeaudubon.org)
field trip chair (fieldtrips@newhopeaudubon.org)
New Hope Audubon Society
P.O. Box 2693
Chapel Hill, NC 27515-2693
http://www.newhopeaudubon.org/