Fragments of the Natural History of Pennsylvania, Part First.

Barton, Benjamin Smith.

Published by Philadelphia: printed for the Author by Way & Groff, 1799. First edition (xviii, 24)., 1799

Condition: Used - Very good Hardcover

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Folio, in modern green cloth and marbled paper, gilt title to spine. Right margin of title page moderately toned, a few spots in the texts, a single perforated library stamp at the top corner of the first page of the Introduction. Benjamin Smith Barton, M.D., (1766- 1815) was professor variously of materia medica, natural history, and botany at the University of Pennsylvania and a member of the Linnaeen Society, the American Philosophical Society, and the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, among others. Barton s principal work is Elements of Botany (1804), the first botany text published in the U.S. His wide ranging interests in natural history led him to publish a number of monographs and studies, e.g., The Fascinating Quality Ascribed to the Rattlesnake (1796) and New Views of the Origins of Tribes in the United States (1797). Barton acted as advisor on botanical collections to Lewis and Clark and was acquainted with Thomas Jefferson and William Bartram. His nephew William P.C. Barton (1786- 1856) was the author of the important A Flora of North America (1821-1823). Fragments of the Natural History of Pennsylvania was intended to illustrate. the Natural History of a Country extremely interesting to philosophers and hitherto very imperfectly explored. These fragments, not quite twenty-five pages of field observations, together with introductory speculations about such matters as the range of the Carolina Parrot and the conformity between the vegetation of some plants and the arrival of certain birds of passage suggest a systematic natural history based on local observation, rather like the Christmas bird count. On the other hand, certain passages in Fragments preserve a reliance on classical authority so that natural history is conducted as a literary, historical study of the texts of ancient received opinion, as in this curious note on the origins of bees and the procurement of honey: It appears to have been a very general opinion among the ancients, that bees were produced from the putrid bodies of animals. The Greeks believed, that these animals arose from putrid bullocks. So rude were the opinions of the ancients respecting the origin of these insects. It is certain, however, that [according to accounts in the Old Testament and in Virgil s Georgics] putrid carcases are often visited by bees, and it is not unlikely that from these carcases, they may be able to procure honey (xi). Absent close observation of bees and carcases, certain rude opinions persist here, side by side with field observations. A handsomely bound copy of a scarce early work on American natural history.

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Bibliographic Details

Title: Fragments of the Natural History of Pennsylvania, Part First.
Publisher: Philadelphia: printed for the Author by Way & Groff, 1799. First edition (xviii, 24).
Publication Date: 1799
Binding: Hardcover
Edition: 1st Edition
Condition: Very Good

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TRILLIUM ANTIQUARIAN BOOKS OUR COLLECTIONS Trillium's Catalogue of Antiquarian Books comprises several collections-- Country Life, Natural History, Canadiana, Literature, Images, and Curiosities. The Trillium Antiquarian Catalogue always will be of a modest size, but I hope it always will be worthy of your interest. You can explore our collections when you visit our web site at www.trilliumbooks.ca. COUNTRY LIFE One way or another, these antiquarian books address the need 'to be versed in country things'. You will find, for example, English farming books from the 18th century, books for anglers, whether by fly or worm, dating almost back to Walton, gardening and horticulture books, studies of apiculture and classic landscape design. Almost any part of the world will do, so long as there are flowers or fish or bees. Because I am someone who has tried his hand at farming, you may find a special antiquarian book on barns or cattle raising or you may find early seed catalogues or herbals with cures and potions which sometimes worked. ANTIQUARIAN NATURAL HISTORY Almost any part of the world will do, too, when it comes to early studies of Natural History. My earliest interest is ornithology, birds and bird books, and so, while you are unlikely to find an elephant folio Audubon in the collection, Alexander Wilson's bird books likely will be on offer or Bewick's or Morris's. Look for early geographies and look for botanical studies of native North American and European plants published on either side of the eighteenth- nineteenth century divide. I do not shrink from some Latin here. Much of our early scientific, as distinct from mythic, zoology (botany, too) originated with the observations of travelers and explorers (that, after all, is where Darwin came in), and therefore you will find journals and memoirs of those who journeyed in the name of science or merely out of curiosity to the Arctic, the Yucatan, or the outskirts of Philadelphia. CANADIANA COLLECTION Our Canadiana collection cuts across all the other categories and some others to boot. It certainly includes interesting editions of the work of early settlers in this part of English Canada-- the Strickland sisters, Susannah Moodie and Catharine Parr Traill, and later arrivals such as Robertson Davies; but you will find as well works on the Canadian arctic and the commentaries of British visitors or wandering Americans, together perhaps with the only Golden Cockerel publication of a Canadian title. LITERATURE COLLECTION Our Literature Collection casts a wide net and catches sermons, novels, essays, poems, letters, and satiric sketches. You may find a 17th century translation of The Consolation of Philosophy or a copy of The Catcher in the Rye in just the right dust wrapper. As someone who started out as a middle American and not an Upper Canadian, I am always on the lookout for an early Mark Twain or something unusual by the other kid from Newark, Stephen Crane. ANTIQUE IMAGES, ILLUSTRATED BOOKS, MAPS If you examine under magnification a Bewick wood-engraving (even a tail-piece at a chapter end), you will begin to understand something about the relation of image and text. Sometimes the images collected here still reside with their texts, as in the illustrated books you will find here, but sometimes they have been separated (courtesy of the book-breaker or simple entropy) and are offered in this collection as separate maps, lithographs, wood-engravings, or wood-cuts of interest in their own right. A COLLECTION OF CURIOSITIES I find an illustrated technical monograph on cockroaches or a treatise on water dowsing by a German count hard to resist and therefore have decided not to. Look for intriguing oddities such as these in this collection-- a commercial fisher would call them the by-catch and pitch them into the sea from whence they came, but these are too good to throw back. BOOK

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