Natural history

Saw this article, The Romance of Science in Victorian Natural History Bookbindings by Allison Meier, showing some wonderful old bindings.

I do have some in my collections too.
I'll go see if I can find them.

Ernst Haeckel illustrations on Natural history

Here's a sample:


enjoy.

Oh, what a nifty idea for a thread, and a great opening picture!

Wow, that's incredible!

One of my older books is Fourteen Weeks in Zoology, published in 1876, was part of a Chautauqua series. It is cheaply bound, but is full of interesting black and white drawings. The online view is HERE.

You can page through the whole thing by just clicking 'View Book' in the middle of the right hand side of the page.

The camel details on page 54 are neat, and the Bearded tortoise on page 167 always cracks me up.

I can see that a text like this would have held much value in those days.

That's a fascinating book, thank you.

Another on my shelves is The Romance Of The Animal World; Interesting Descriptions Of The Strange And Curious In Natural History from 1905.

Yay for internet archives!

This version has the few, but nice, illustrations intact.

oh, and it has a rather nice binding:

Is your copy in that good condition?

Yes, that's my scan. And over-brightened too, I can see. I'll have to pull the book out and try again. I've learned a few tricks since then.

They're not TBSL books, but I'm hoping to buy The American Museum of Natural History's Opulent Oceans and Natural Histories soon.

>10 LibraryPerilous: oooh, but full of 'tattered' illustrations!

Another title I have is The Zoo Book: Wild Animals and Birds of Jungle and Forest. Most copies I see online were published 1916, but mine is 1902.

Can't find a digital copy, but here's a sample of the illustrations:



sub-title being posted on the other thread.

I seem to recall that in the Laura Ingalls Wilder books, Pa had a big book about the world that he would read to them. It might have been like one of these, although older (1870s).

>12 2wonderY: I really want to read this! Copies are pretty cheap. Maybe I'll use some birthday money on it.

>11 2wonderY: There's a bird one, too: Extraordinary Birds. Apparently, some of the prints in the sets are frameable.

This thread is going to be dangerous for my TBR and TBP lists.

**smirk**

from the childrens' shelf:
Madam How and Lady Why or First Lessons in Earth Lore for Children by Charles Kingsley

3.6k (that's thousands, right?) antique nature prints to browse:

https://www.pinterest.com/joanscanlan/botanicals-nature-studies/

and a mix of old and modern images:

https://www.pinterest.com/VancouvernotBC/animalsplantsrocks-and-so-on/

My favorite today:



I've started a modest collection of pisces, in honor of my father:

https://www.pinterest.com/2wondery/here-fishy-fishy/

Just popping in to post this link, in case you weren't already aware of it: http://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/

>18 2wonderY: dangerous links...I could spend hours looking...

Unearthed a very tattered copy of Little Folks in Feathers and Fur in my attic. It definitely focuses on the strange and odd. The illustrations are understated, but worth examining.

Aha! Under that were two more. Farm Friends Story Book is, as it suggests, targeted for the elementary set. Nothing remarkable; and I will offer it up to others more interested.

But on the bottom of the stack is a truly wonderful example. Cassell’s Popular Natural History. The illustrations are astonishing and detailed.

For your enjoyment, a plate from Cassell's Popular Natural History:

>24 2wonderY: LOVELY!

We've been de-cluttering our home, and in the process I've uncovered books that I'd tucked away and forgotten. Some of them fit this topic.

Run, crab, run! Chulthu approaches!

>26 MrAndrew: That would have been so much more entertaining than learning to read with Dick and Jane.