Popular Science
(Art Nouveau) [Verneuil, Maurice Pillard] | Le Décor Floral
£1,500.00
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A striking Art Nouveau design portfolio, unusual for using photography to depict geometric floral arrangements.
This portfolio is usually attributed to the French designer and commercial artist Maurice Pillard Verneuil (1869-1942), a student of Eugène Grasset whose career successfully spanned both Art Nouveau and Art Deco eras. If so it would be his only known photographic work. As bookseller Daniela Kromp has explained, it may be that Verneuil was inspired by the Viennese pioneer of botanical photography, Martin Gerlach (1846-1918), who was producing botanical portfolios as early as 1893.
“Although in Helen Bieri Thomson's bibliography, Verneuil is named as the author (or editor) of Le Décor Floral (cf. p. 118), he isn't known as a photographer so far. Thus, Verneuil presumably has not done the photographs himself, but at least he made the arrangements of the plants and of each particular plate... it is known that Verneuil made a journey to Vienna in 1902 (cf. Thomson p. 13). Perhaps he got to know Martin Gerlach's photographic work there in detail and received the essential inspiration for Le Décor Floral” (Kromp, "Short List for London 2018", item 45).
The publisher of this set, Librairie Centraledes Beaux-Arts, was one of the primary firms of the Art Nouveau movement, producing important work by Alphonse Mucha and Eugène Grasset, as well as other important portfolios by Verneuil.
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Documents d’Art Décoratif d’après Nature...50 Planches. Bordures et Panneaux Semis, Fonds ornés, etc. Paris: Librairie Centraledes Beaux-Arts, [c. 1904].
Folio. Half title and 50 tinted collotype prints after photographs, 4-page title and publisher’s prospectus printed in green and brown. In the original linen-backed card portfolio with linen ties. Bernard Quaritch ink stamp to the title, ink stamp of the Birmingham Assay office Library to the inside of the cover. Portfolio browned and rubbed with some wear at the corners and slight creasing to the upper cover, linen ties browned but intact, title and prospectus toned and a little rubbed at the extremities, plates very faintly toned at the edges. Portfolio professionally cleaned and spine caps repaired by Bainbridge Conservation. Very good condition.
(Gould, Stephen Jay) Wilford, John Noble | The Riddle of the Dinosaur
£250.00
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First edition, first printing. Presentation copy inscribed by the author on the half title, “To Stephen Jay Gould, Many thanks for the inspiration of your essays. Best wishes, John Noble Wilford”.
A lovely copy of this popular account of recent developments in dinosaur palaeontology, including the discoveries that they were likely warm-blooded and that a comet probably caused their extinction, by Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times journalist John Noble Wilford (1933 - ). Wilford was responsible for the paper’s front-page story on the Apollo 11 Moon landing in 1969, and his by-line was the only one that appeared on the front page that day. Stephen Dubner, co-author of Freakonomics, described one of the sentences in the Moon landing piece – describing Armstrong’ heart-rate during the descent to the surface – as “one of the most elegant little uses of data I can recall seeing in a news article” (Dubner, “When Data Tell the Story”, Freakonomics blog, July 21, 2009).
Recipient Stephen Jay Gould (1941-2002) was one of the leading evolutionary biologists of the 20th century. His theory of punctuated equilibria challenged the idea that evolution is a slow and constant accumulation of changes, pointing out that instead it often occurs in rapid bursts of speciation followed by periods of stasis. He was a prominent defender of teaching evolution in schools and a leading critic of the field of sociobiology, which he saw as providing a pseudoscientific basis for discrimination. But he was best known as a popular science writer, penning three hundred essays that were originally published in Natural History Magazine. In 1991 Wilford reviewed Gould’s fifth essay collection, Bully for Brontosaurus, calling its contents “provocative and delightfully discursive”.
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...Drawings by Douglas Henderson. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1985.
Quarto. Original grey boards, cream cloth backstrip, titles to spine and author’s name to upper board in gilt and copper. With the dust jacket. 6 colour plates, illustrations and charts within the text. An excellent copy in the jacket with just a couple of miniscule rubbed spots and faint toning along the upper edges.
(Hosking, Eric) Baker, J. A. | The Peregrine.
£650.00
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First edition, first impression of this masterpiece of 20th century nature writing, cited by Ted Hughes, Andrew Motion, Werner Herzog, and many others, as one of the most important works of its kind. Uncommon in such nice condition in the dust jacket. This copy from the library of eminent bird photographer Eric J. Hosking, with his owl bookplate.
Author J. A. Baker (1926-1987) was a librarian who spent ten years tracking peregrine falcons in coastal Essex during the 1950s and 60s. This, the first of his two published works, distils his observations of the birds and their changing habitat into a lyrical account of a single year, beginning in autumn with the birds’ migration from Scandinavia and ending with their return north in spring.
Born in 1909, Eric Hosking developed his love for nature and photography at an early age. He received a Kodak Box Brownie at age eight, and graduated to a plate camera by age ten, using it to photograph birds. He lost his job in car sales at the beginning of the Great Depression, but an opportunity arose when the Sunday Dispatch asked him to get a shot of an elephant seal at the London Zoo. For several years he supplemented his income by photographing weddings and children (including the young princesses for Country Life in 1935), but by 1937 he was a full-time nature photographer, the first person in Britain to make their living in this field.
Hosking was intrepid in his pursuit of wild birds. He designed his own hides and made a number of important technical advances, among them the use of the flash in nature photography. His most famous photo is the “technically perfect” shot of a barn owl carrying prey that he captured using an electronic flash in 1948 (Sage, “A Photographer in Hiding”, New Scientist, September 1979). He is widely credited with developing wildlife photography into a mature artform.
During his sixty-year career Hosking’s photographs were published thousands of times around the world. He authored thirteen books, including the autobiography An Eye for a Bird, and he lectured, wrote for popular periodicals, and appeared on television. Hosking was president of the Nature Photographic Society and served as vice-president of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds and the British Ornithologists’ Union. He was awarded the RSPB’s Gold Medal in 1974, and three years later received an OBE.
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London: Collins, 1967.
Octavo. Original black boards, titles to spine gilt. With the dust jacket. Bookplate of Eric J. Hosking. Tail of spine a little bumped, lightly rubbed at the edges. An excellent copy in the jacket that is also a little faded on the spine panel and edges, and lightly rubbed at the extremities.
(Landsberg, Peter) Hawking, Stephen W. | A Brief History of Time
£350.00
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First edition, the corrected second printing of this landmark popular work on the quest for the Grand Unified Theory. From the library of physicist Peter Landsberg, with his ownership signature, notes and highlighting, and letter to him loosely inserted.
Peter Landsberg (1922-2010), was a German Jewish refugee to Britain who earned his PhD in quantum mechanics at Imperial College London in 1949 and joined the faculties of the Universities of Cardiff and Southampton. “Landsberg was not solely interested in one branch of physics, he was interested in physics in general and this boyish enthusiasm took his research to all areas of theoretical work”, among them the quantum phenomenon known as bose condensation, the relationship between quantum mechanics and living things, thermodynamics, cosmology, and applications of solar energy. He is best known for his explication of “Landsberg efficiency”, the theoretical limits on how much solar power can be converted to electricity in a given situation (obituary in The Scotsman, May 23, 2010).
Landsberg has made numerous short notes — often page number references — and underlined a number of passages, primarily in chapters 8: The Origin and Fate of the Universe and 9: The Arrow of Time, that deal with thermodynamics and the inflationary model of the universe. Loosely inserted is a typed letter signed to Landsberg from Canon Robert Winnett (1910-1989), to whom the book had been loaned, and who writes that it conveyed to him “a sense of the infinite mystery of the universe, and of unplumbed depths still to be explored, an attitude which is surely akin to the religious”. He goes on the discuss how scientific ideas about the origin of the universe might align with Christianity and other religions, ending with the thought that “we are dealing with probabilities rather than certainties... The origins of religion lie in dimensions of human experience other than the scientific, and any cosmological theory can be interpreted theistically, or if we will, atheistically”.
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...From the Big Bang to Black Holes. Introduction by Carl Sagan. Illustrations by Ron Miller. New York: Bantam Books, 1988.
Octavo. Original black quarter cloth, dark grey boards, title to spine in silver, Hawking’s monogram to upper board in blind. With the dust jacket. Illustrations throughout the text. Binding a little rubbed and bumped. A very good copy in the rubbed and creased jacket with some bubbling of the plastic coating, especially along folds.
(Mathematics) | Georgian era arithmetic workbook
£350.00
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A substantial early-19th century arithmetic workbook with several calligraphic headings featuring animals in the designs, in coloured ink.
The contents of this workbook comprise lessons and exercises in advanced arithmetic, primarily multiplication, division, and the conversion of quantities. The contents are strongly mercantile in flavour, featuring problems such as “In 552 common pounds of silk how many great pounds”; “If I give 1£ 1s 8d for 3 lbs of coffee what must be given for 29 lbs & 1 oz”; and “What is the half years rent of 547 acres of land at 15s 6d per acre per anum”.
The manuscript also features occasional overwriting in a different hand, with some entries dated 1820. These seem to be records of sales of wood and articles fashioned from it.
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England, c. 1800-1820.
84-leaf purpose-made blank book (200 x 165 mm). Original tan half skiver, waste paper marbled boards. Manuscript equations, notes, and calligraphic illustrations in coloured ink filling all 168 pages. Overwriting in a separate hand, dated 1820, on some pages. Spine rolled, boards worn, occasional smudges and spots to contents. Very good condition.
(Ratcliffe, Derek) Howard, H. Eliot | Territory in Bird Life.
£100.00
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First edition, first impression of the book that popularised the modern understanding of territoriality among male birds. From the library of the important conservationist Derek Ratcliffe (1929-2005), who discovered the effect of DDT-related eggshell thinning on peregrine falcon populations. With his ownership inscription on the front free endpaper, dated 24 July, 1964.
Author H. Elliot Howard (1873-1940) was an amateur ornithologist whose study of warblers led him to the conclusion that male birds fight not for females, but directly for territory, which then attracts females. This was first explicated in The British Warblers: a History with Problems of Their Lives (published in parts between 1907 and 14). The lavishly illustrated work was well-reviewed, but too expensive for a general readership, so Howard published Territory in Bird Life in 1920. This popular work explores all aspects of territory among many different species, and “from the late 1920s the theory became increasingly influential both in Europe and the United States” (Online Dictionary of National Biography).
“Howard was not, in fact, the first person to discover territory in birds for, unknown to him, J. B. Altum in 1868 in Germany and C. B. Moffat in 1903 in Ireland had described its main features. However, it was Howard's persuasive and extensive exposition of the concept that established its importance and brought it to international ornithological notice; it is a striking example of an amateur significantly influencing modern scientific research” (ODNB).
This former owner of this copy was Derek Ratcliffe, one of the most influential British conservationists of the 20th century. Ratcliffe was educated as a botanist, completing his PhD at Bangor in 1953, and then being appointed a scientific officer for the Nature Conservancy in Edinburgh. He made important surveys of plant and bird communities in the Scottish Highlands, many of which had never been studied in detail. During 1961-62 he completed the first survey of British peregrine falcons, discovering that they were declining in numbers and even ceasing to breed at all in some areas. "The cause of the decline was persistent pesticides, notably DDT, which caused eggshell thinning and catastrophic breeding failure. Ratcliffe published a classic paper on eggshell thinning in the journal Nature in 1967, and a more detailed paper in the Journal of Applied Ecology in 1970, both of which were among the most frequently cited ornithological scientific publications" (ODNB).
In the 1960s and 70s, as scientific assessor for the Nature Conservancy, he led efforts to inventory Britain’s most important natural sites. “At the heart of this work was the exposition of a philosophy for nature conservation founded on the use of such concepts as 'diversity', 'fragility', and 'naturalness', which enabled scientists systematically to compare sites and even regions. This became, and remained, the cornerstone of nature conservation, culminating in the publication of the two-volume book edited by Ratcliffe, A Nature Conservation Review (1977)” (ODNB). During the 1980s he led the movement to establish sites of special scientific interest throughout Britain, and was a key player in the drive to prevent industrial scale pine tree planting on the critically important flow country habitat in northern Scotland.
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...With Illustrations by G. E. Lodge and H. Grönvold. London: John Murray, 1920.
Octavo. Original blue cloth, titles to spine gilt. Colour frontispiece and 10 black and white plates with tissue guards, double-page map. Errata slip at page 238, single leaf of publisher’s ads at rear. Binding lightly rubbed at the extremities, faint spotting to the edges of the text block, free endpapers partially tanned. An excellent copy.
(Zallinger, Rudolph) Ostrom, John H. & Theodore Delevoryas | A Guide to the Rudolph Zallinger Mural The Age of Reptiles
£35.00
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Reissue of this illustrated visitor’s guide to the magisterial Age of Reptiles mural in the Great Hall of Yale’s Peabody Museum, written by John Ostrom, one of the most important palaeontologists of the 20th century. Originally published in 1966 in the same pamphlet form. A beautiful copy in unusually nice condition.
“The Age of Reptiles mural is an artistic masterpiece and was, for its time, perhaps the most scientifically accurate representation of the Mesozoic world ever created” (Black, “Creating the Age of Reptiles”, Smithsonian Magazine, January 3, 2012). The 110-foot-long, 16-foot-high mural was completed between 1943 and 1947 by art student Rudolph Zallinger (1919-1995), who had previously been employed at the museum painting seaweed specimens. Museum director Albert Parr had initially envisioned the space broken into panels illustrating individual species, but Zallinger developed the idea for a “sweep through time” from the Devonian period to the Cretaceous, “more than three million years of earth history” (introduction to the present).
“With the format established, Zallinger was rapidly schooled in vertebrate paleontology, paleobotany and anatomy by the museum’s experts. The animals had to be scientifically accurate, their environments appropriately stocked with plants from the right era, and the whole fossil cast had to fit together in an aesthetically pleasing style. Accuracy was of extreme importance, but so was making the painting visually appealing to visitors... The artist also faced the technical decision of how to execute the mural. Zallinger decided on a fresco secco, a classic method in which pigments are combined with egg and water and are painted on dried plaster that is moistened at the time of application. As Zallinger composed each successive rendition of the mural, the space he was going to paint on was prepared and covered in plaster. What is remarkable is how early Zallinger arrived at what became the final layout for his Mesozoic panorama. While the fine details of the plants and animals changed with each ever-more-detailed version, their general shapes and poses were established by the time Zallinger created a 1943 ‘cartoon’ version of the mural on rag paper” (Black).
The mural is one of the largest paintings in the world, and earned its creator a Pulitzer Fellowship in Art in 1949. It was highly influential in both paleontological art and in popular culture during the mid-century. A number of guides to the mural have been published over the years, including this one by John H. Ostrom (1928 - 2005). Ostrom was a Yale professor, director of the Peabody Museum, and “the most influential palaeontologist of the second half of the 20th century” (Dodson & Gingerich, “John H. Ostrom”, American Journal of Science, volume 306, number 1, January 2006). He discovered that dinosaurs had the metabolisms and agility of mammals and birds, and that they were closely related to modern birds, leading to the “dinosaur renaissance” of the second half of the century.
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...in the Peabody Museum, Yale University. Discovery Supplement Number 1. New Haven, CT: Peabody Museum of Natural History, Yale University, 1966.
38-page pamphlet, wire-stitched. Original green wrappers printed in black. Folding plate depicting the mural and “Earth Clock”. Pencilled number to the edge of the upper wrapper. A fine copy.
Aikin, John | The Calendar of Nature
£350.00
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Third edition of this charming little book on the changing of the seasons from month to month by the “physician and man of letters” John Aiken (1747-1822) (Hahn, The Oxford Companion to Children’s Literature).
Aiken charming combines practical knowledge of nature and gardening with literary references. For April he writes: “This month gives the most perfect image of Spring; for its vicissitudes of warm gleams of sunshine, and gentle showers, have the most wonderful effects in hastening that universal springing of the vegetable tribes, from whence the season derives its appellation. April generally begins with raw unpleasant weather, the influence of the equinoctial storms still in some degree prevailing, Its opening is thus described in a poem of Mr. Warton’s: ‘Mindful of disaster past, And thinking of the northern blast, The fleety storm returning still, The morning hoar; the evening chill; Reluctant comes the timid Spring...’ Early in the month, that welcome guest and harbinger of Summer, the swallow, returns. The kind first seen, is the chimney, or house, swallow, known by its long forked tail, and red breast. At first, here and there, only one appears, glancing quick by us, as if scarcely able to endure the cold. ‘The swallow for a moment seen, Skims in haste the village green’.”
A very nice copy in an attractive contemporary tree calf binding. With the ownership inscription and notes of a woman, Eliza Davenport, who obtained this copy in 1810. Davenport’s short pencilled notes at the rear of the volume relate to a handful of observations of flowering plants and other phenomena.
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...Designed for the Instruction and Entertainment of Young Persons. The Third Edition. London: Joseph Johnson, 1787.
Duodecimo (155 x 95mm). Contemporary tree calf, spine gilt in compartments, marbled endpapers. 1810 ownership inscription to the verso of the front free endpaper, pencilled notes of a similar date to the verso of the rear blank. Binding lightly rubbed at the extremities, the corner of B6 torn, not affecting the text, light spotting to the contents. Very good condition.
Augusta, Joseph, Greta Hort, & Zdeněk Burian | Prehistoric Animals
£250.00
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First English language edition, first impression of this vibrantly illustrated work, originally published in Prague under the title Tiere der Urzeit in the same year. Rare in the dust jacket in such nice condition.
Between the 1930s and 1960s “the foremost painter of dinosaur restorations was Zdeněk Burian (1905-1981). His canvasses were used to illustrate a number of popular books on prehistoric life by Joseph Augusta, and in the late 1950s and 1960s these were translated into English and widely circulated. So the Burian illustrations offered an alternative to those of Zallinger [responsible for the Peabody Museum mural], or of the late Charles Knight. But there was not much of a difference. Apatosaurus and Diplodocus stand quietly by their respective swamps, accompanied by partially submerged relatives. A T. rex besets a pair of Trachodon, but none of the three lifts a leg off the ground, or even seems to be moving at all” (Ashworth, Paper Dinosaurs 48). Though his dinosaurs are no longer considered anatomically accurate, Burian was highly respected in his time and his paintings were widely reproduced and copied, often without acknowledgement. In 2017 the first dinosaur discovered in the Czech Republic was named in his and Augusta’s honour, Burianosaurus augustai.
The author of the text, Joseph Augusta (1903-1968) was a palaeontologist at Charles University in Prague between 1933 and 1968, and is best known for his role as a science populariser. He published around twenty books on science for the general public and served as an advisor to the hit 1955 film Journey to the Beginning of Time (Cesta do Pravěku), which combined human actors with stop-motion special effects.
The translator of the book, Greta Hort (1903-1967), was born in Copenhagen, the daughter of Vilhelm Hjort, astronomer royal. She earned her PhD at Newnham College, Cambridge and then became a research fellow at Girton College, publishing on mysticism and religious thought. In 1938 Hort was appointed principal of University Women's College (later University College) at the University of Melbourne. She was later made chair of English literature at Aarhus University, Denmark (Australian Dictionary of Biography).
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...Illustrated under the direction of the author by Zdeněk Burian. Translated by Dr. Greta Hort. London: Spring Books, [1956].
Folio. Original buff, heavy-grain cloth, titles to spine and Stegosaurus design to upper board in brown. With the dust jacket. 60 lithographic plates of which 31 are in colour. Lower corner of the binding knocked, which has also slightly creased the corner of the text block and the jacket, spine rolled. A very good copy in the bright jacket that is lightly rubbed at the extremities with a few nicks and short closed splits.
Bacon, Gertrude | Memories of Land and Sky
£350.00
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First edition of the memoirs of the first Englishwoman to fly. Inscribed by the author, using her married name, on the title page, “(Gertrude Foggitt) – Sept. 1936”.
Gertrude Bacon (1874-1949) was the daughter of the scientist and balloonist Rev. John Maczenzie Bacon, and she accompanied him on most of his expeditions. "Bacon became fascinated by flying and as a journalist reported on the various airships and planes being built." In August 1904 she became the first woman to fly in an airship, being a passenger in the near-disastrous first flight of an 84-foot-long ship designed by Stanley Spencer. "From 22 to 29 August, 1909, the world's first aviation meeting was held at Rheims, France. Bacon was determined to go for a ride in one of the new machines. On the last day she was taken up in a Farman plane, squeezed between the radiator and the pilot. She described the takeoff: 'The motion was wonderfully smooth - smoother yet - and then - ! Suddenly there had come into it a new indescribable quality - a lift - a lightness - a life!' Thus she became the first Englishwoman to fly" (International Women in Science: A Biographical Dictionary, p. 15). Bacon flew on several other occasions, and became the first ever hydroplane passenger at Lake Windermere in 1912. Bacon became Gertrude Foggitt in 1929, when she married fellow botanist and chemist Thomas Jackson Foggitt.
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...With Twenty-Four Illustrations. London: Methuen & Co. Ltd., 1928.
Octavo. Original blue cloth, titles to spine gilt and to upper board in blind. 8-page publisher’s ads at rear. Portrait frontispiece and 15 plates from black and white photographs. Spine cocked, cloth a little rubbed at the extremities, two shallow dents in the upper board, lower corner bumped, some spotting to the contents, particularly the early leaves, and edges of the text block. Very good condition.
Baxter, James Finney | Scientists Against Time
£350.00
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First edition, first printing of the Pulitzer Prize-winning account of Allied technological development during the Second World War. Inscribed by the author on the front free endpaper, “To Betty Way Brown, with best wishes, James P. Baxter 3rd”.
Author James F. Baxter (1893-1975) was a historian and for more than twenty years the popular president of Williams College in Massachusetts. During the Second World War he served as research coordinator of information (1941-1943) and director of the Office of Strategic Services (1942-1943), and the work for this book was undertaken during the latter part of the war while he served as the historical researcher for the Office of Scientific Research and Development. It includes chapters on submarine and air warfare, radar and LORAN, rocketry, proximity fuses, fire control technologies, new explosives and propellants, antimalarials, blood transfusion, penicillin, aviation medicine, and the Manhattan Project, among others.
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...With Illustrations. An Atlantic Monthly Press Book. Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1946.
Octavo. Original grey cloth, titles and design to spine and upper board blocked in red and blue, top edge dyed red. Frontispiece and 33 double-sided plates from photographs, 3 illustrations within the text. Spine toned, cloth slightly rubbed, endpapers tanned, light spotting to the edges of the text block and occasionally to the contents.
Boltson, Howard | 19 Meticulous Birding Notebooks kept during the 1980s and early 1990s.
£3,750.00
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An exceptional set of notebooks recording the observations of an Audubon Master Birder between 1985 and 1992, primarily on Long Island, but also including trips within the US and Caribbean. Natural history records of such depth and specificity are extremely rare, and this set has fantastic potential for research into a wide range of topics, from the impact of climate change to the social history of birding and citizen science. While it is unfortunate that notebooks one through five, and eleven, are lacking, this is still a very significant and nearly complete set of material covering almost a decade.
The compiler of these records, Howard Boltson, lived in East Northport, near Huntington on Long Island, and was heavily involved with local and national ornithology groups. A member of the Huntington Audubon Society, he had completed the organisation’s rigourous, multi-week Master Birder course and was a regular volunteer, including as a field trip leader. He participated in Project Birdwatch, an initiative of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and the Federation of New York State Bird Clubs. Begun in 1986, the project’s goal was to identify and describe seasonal patterns of bird distribution by combining data from the weekly reports of experienced observers (”How to Join Project Birdwatch” in Feathers, the newsletter of the Hudson-Mohawk Bird Club, winter 1986). He also regularly submitted reports of rare bird sightings to the New York State Avian Records Committee, and his photos were published at least twice in the Journal of the North American Bluebird Society (the spring and winter 2003 issues). Boltson was featured in the local press several times, including for an article about swans in which he is introduced as “the bird man of Huntington” (Ketcham, “On the Swan Trail”, Long Island Journal, January 28th, 1996).
Boltson’s notebooks are meticulous records of his bird watching. Each session is given a date and location (sometimes accompanied by hand-drawn maps), and notes are made about the weather and other conditions. Boltson then lists all the individual birds spotted, including their sex when the species is dimorphic, and he records details of those he can’t immediately identify, sometimes adding drawings to assist his memory. Activities that he witnessed, such as nesting and feeding, are included, as are bird calls. Other animals, in one case a turtle, make appearances. Most of the entries are written in black ink with special notes in red, such as his early retirement in 1986 (”First day of retirement - N. Y. Life - good luck to me!”), the “red letter day” in his feeder notebook when a black-capped chickadee eats from his hand for the first time, as well as his concerned report of a new heat record in notebook 18. Red ink is also used to mark the birds he adds to his life list, returning later to write their list number around the earlier text where he identified them. Totals are given for the number of species seen per month and cumulatively, with separate totals for life list additions. Boltson also records organised activities, such as field trips and lectures he either attended or led, usually tallying his expenses and gas mileage, and including the names and phone numbers of participants. A quantity of related material such as coupons, receipts, flyers, news clippings, and recording forms are loosely inserted. While the majority of Bolston’s birdwatching was done locally at sites such as Jamaica Bay and Sunken Meadow on Long Island, he sometimes travelled further, including to upstate New York, New Jersey, New Hampshire, Washington D. C., Miami and the Everglades, and the Bahamas. The feeder notebook records activities at his home between November 1986 and February 1993, including the types and amounts of bird food he was putting out, the birds who appeared, and their behaviours.
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East Northport, NY, 1985-1993.
19 spiral-bound pocket notebooks, each approximately 120 pages, with card covers (approximately 160 x 110 mm), completely filled with extensive manuscript notes in black, and occasionally red, ink. All but one of the notebooks are numbered (6 through 24) and each is labelled on the cover with the month and year that it was begun and ended. The other is labelled “Feeder Notes, East Northport L. I. N. Y., Nov 1986 - Feb 1993”. Inside each of the covers Boltson has written his name, address, phone number, and current roles in birding organisations. The brands of the notebooks are Pen-Tab, Jericho, Diamond Supply Company, and CVS. Most of the contents are manuscript text, but there are frequent drawings and sometimes loosely inserted material. Notebook 11 (September 1987-March 1988) is lacking, and presumably there were also notebooks numbered 1-5 that are not included here. There is light wear to the edges of the notebooks, especially around the upper corners. Excellent condition.
Cadbury, Deborah | The Dinosaur Hunters
£45.00
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First edition, first impression of this well-received popular history of the discovery and scientific documentation of dinosaur fossils in Britain during the early 19th century, notable for its emphasis on the work of Mary Anning in addition to that of Gideon Mantell, William Buckland, and Richard Owen. Though Anning’s work as a fossil collector has been well-known to specialists and historians since the Victorian Era, this volume was an early part of the revival of popular interest in her life which began in 1999 at the 200th anniversary of her birth, and which has continued in recent years with novels and films, as well as an initiative to place a statue of her in Lyme Regis.
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...A Story of Scientific Rivalry and the Discovery of the Prehistoric World. London: Fourth Estate, 2000.
Octavo. Original brown boards, titles to spine gilt, green endpapers. With the dust jacket. Illustrations throughout the text. Very slight indentation at the head of spine and shallow bump tot edge of the upper board, light spotting to the top edge of the text block. An excellent copy with the jacket, of which the lower edges of the inner flaps are slightly curled from being in a jacket protector.
Cotton, Lizzie E. | Bee Keeping for Profit
Sold Out
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RESERVED Second edition of this rare example of a commercial beekeeping work by a woman, first published in 1880.
Author Lizzie Cotton describes herself in the introduction as a professional apiarist “engaged in raising honey for market”, and this volume was published to advertise the “Controllable Hive”, which she invented, and the “New System of Bee Management” she developed for it. The hive was designed with separate glass boxes on the tops and sides for honeycomb production, and she claimed that her system provided regular feeding so that colonies survived the winter, prevented swarming, and increased honey production and profits. Cotton writes that she distrusted “patented” hive designs as often being swindles, and did not patent hers so that anyone could construct their own “for much cheaper than I furnish them”, though she was willing to sell a hive with two sample glass honey boxes for eight dollars, or with a full set of glass boxes for twelve.
It seems that there was much controversy about Cotton within the apiarist community. “Her name cropped up regularly in the Humbugs and Swindlers column in Bee Culture. People complained that their bees had swarmed, and they had not made a profit from their bees. Cotton also had a tendency to advertise a sale on her hives after the sale had already expired” (Horn, Beeconomy, p. 187). In a letter to bee culture in the 1886 a correspondent writes that a swarm he ordered from her was of high quality and producing well in a Controllable Hive. The editors respond that “We are very glad to get the above report... With the very large prices Mrs. Cotton charges for whatever she advertises, she certainly ought to give good measure and good quality, and we are very glad if she is beginning to do so” (Bee Culture, July 15, 1886, p. 588).
Cotton herself hits back in the introduction to this volume, writing that “Since the day I introduced my Controllable Hive and New System of Bee Management to the notice of the public, the worthless bee hive swindlers and their tools have been boiling over with wrath against me, lying and slandering me through the public journals, and especially through the Bee Journals, and all because, that I, a woman, had succeeded in inventing a bee hive and new system of bee management superior to anything yet produced, and which was fast coming into use on its merits, among bee keepers; and consequently the sale of other hives was decreasing in the same proportion.”
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...A New System of Bee Management. Second Edition. Illustrated. Price One Dollar. West Gorham, Maine: privately published, 1883.
Octavo. Original purple cloth with Greek key design blocked in blind to the boards. Engraved portrait frontispiece and illustrations throughout the text. Contemporary ownership inscription of Marcus J. James to the front pastedown. Cloth rubbed and marked with wear at the extremities, upper corner bumped, hinges cracked. Good condition.
Emiliani, Cesare | Ancient Temperatures
£35.00
- Offprint of an early popular article on ancient climate by one of the founders of the field, Cesare Emiliani (1922-1995).
During the late 1950s Emiliani studied the tests (shells) of marine amoebas called foraminifera that are found in samples taken from the floors of the deep oceans. He realised that the oxygen isotope composition of the tests was influenced by atmospheric conditions at the time they were alive and that the deep-sea cores could be used to chart climate going back millions of years. This work laid the foundations for modern analysis of past climates. It also established that the ice ages were a cyclic phenomena; contributed to our understanding ocean floor spreading and plate tectonics; and provided influential support for the hypothesis of Milutin Milanković that climate changes in the deep past had been driven by long-term alterations in the Earth’s orbit and geology. Emiliani remained a leading figure in the study of Earth’s climate history through the 1990s, and was awarded both the Vega Medal and the Alexander Aggasiz Medal. -
...Reprinted from Scientific American, February 1958. San Francisco: W. H. Freeman and Company, 1958.
12 page pamphlet, stapled. Illustrations throughout. Very faintly toned at the extreme edges of the spine and wrappers. A superb copy.
Farlow, James O. & M. K. Brett-Surman, editors | The Complete Dinosaur
£75.00
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First edition, first printing. A beautiful copy of one of the most scholarly and best-selling of the dinosaur encyclopedias published during the "dinomania" of the 1990s.
The Complete Dinosaur, copiously illustrated and accessible to both professional and popular audiences, contains forty-three essays by leading geologists and palaeontologists on dinosaur physiology, behaviour, and evolution; the history of palaeontology around the world; and the appearance of dinosaurs in popular culture. The Quarterly Review of Biology described it as “the most readable and interesting book on many aspects of dinosaurs that I know” in which “even the dinosaurian veteran will find novel insights and perspectives”. They cite in particular the chapters on the history of dinosaur studies as “the most comprehensive and historiographically integrated treatment of the subject to date” as well as “Mary Higby Schweitzer’s thoughtful and rational review on how we study the biomolecular resides in fossil organisms, the ‘dialogue’ on dinosaur extinction between a gradualist (Peter Dodson) and a catastrophist (Dale A. Russell), and R. E. H. Reid’s powerful and comprehensive treatment of dinosaurian physiology” (The Quarterly Review of Biology vol. 73, no. 4, December 1998).
Still in print, a second, revised and expanded, edition was published to much acclaim in 2012.
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Bloomington & Indianapolis, IN: Indiana University Press, 1997.
Tall quarto. Original grey cloth, titles to spine and T-rex design to upper board in black, yellow endpapers embossed with patterns of dinosaur scales. With the dust jacket. 8 double-sided colour plates, greyscale illustrations throughout the text. Just a single tiny crease at the edge of the dust jacket. An exceptional copy.
Fenn, Lady Ellenor | A Short History of Insects
Sold Out
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First and only edition of this rare work on entomology for children by the prolific educational author Lady Ellenor Fenn (1744-1815), who wrote under the pseudonyms Mrs. Teachwell and Mrs. Lovechild.
Fenn had no children of her own, but she and her husband, the antiquarian John Fenn, raised an orphan heiress and frequently looked after their nieces and nephews, for whom she began writing, illustrating, and binding manuscripts. She was influenced by Anna Letitia Barbauld's Lessons for Children (1778), and her early works were on manners, though she branched out to other non-fiction topics. “Her most famous title, Cobwebs to Catch Flies (1783–4), contained dialogues for teaching reading. A copy was received in the royal nursery, and it went through many editions in Britain and America until the 1870s. Ellenor was particularly interested in educating girls, and many titles were issued in the series Mrs Teachwell's Library for Young Ladies” (Oxford Dictionary of National Biography).
The preface to this volume opens with the observation that, "Natural History seems likely to become the amuseument of our Wives and Children; but the enormous expence of books on that subject; and other reasons still more cogent, point out the expedience of an epitome for the use of Ladies and Young Persons”. She also focused on mothers, writing book and producing games and other educational material to assist them in teaching material that they may not have had the opportunity to learn in their own youth.
This volume is also connected with the Leverian Museum, being a “pocket companion” to the collection that was built over many years by Sir Ashton Lever and was particularly rich in natural history specimens, as well as material from the Cook expeditions. The Museum was exhibited in Leicester Square between 1775 and 1786 (and was purchased by the physician James Parkinson in 1784), then for another twenty years across the Thames at the Blackfriars Rotunda. Fenn wrote another book based on its contents, on quadrupeds, published in 1792.
Fenn “realized the importance of pictures as an aid to learning and published several volumes of woodcuts for children, and seems to have maintained a close practical contact with her publisher in the layout and production of her works, which contain large types with wide margins.” This volume includes eight attractive, hand-coloured plates by the Suffolk engraver George Quinton (1776-1851).
“Ellenor Fenn's works were popular and well reviewed in her day and regularly reprinted until the 1860s. However, her formulaic output, her disapproval of imaginative stories, her insistence on class distinctions, and her determination 'to correct some of the foibles incident to girls' (Mrs Teachwell, Female Guardian, title-page) have not endeared her to twentieth-century critics... Yet she had humour and realized that the educational process must be enjoyable to both adult and child. Above all she had the gift of communicating with children at their own level” (ODNB).
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...(Extracted from Works of Credit) Designed as an Introduction to the Study of that Branch of Natural History, and as a Pocket Companion to those who Visit the Leverian Museum. Norwich: Stevenson and Matchett, et al., 1797.
Duodecimo in sixes (185 x 110 mm). Original paste boards, recently rebacked to style with paper, new paper title label Hand-coloured, engraved frontispiece and 7 plates of which 3 are folding, by G, Quinton. Ownership initials to front free endpaper and monogram bookplate. Rebacked, as noted. Boards worn and dulled, lower corner knocked, contents clean. A very good copy.
Gould, Stephen Jay | Dinosaur in a Haystack
£500.00
- First edition, first printing and a beautiful association copy inscribed by the author on the half title, “For Richard & Jude [Judy], All the best, dear old friends, Steve. Stephen Jay Gould”.
Stephen Jay Gould (1941-2002) was one of the leading evolutionary biologists of the 20th century. His theory of punctuated equilibria challenged the idea that evolution is a slow and constant accumulation of changes, pointing out that instead it often occurs in rapid bursts of speciation followed by periods of stasis. He was a prominent defender of teaching of evolution in schools and a leading critic of the field of sociobiology, which he saw as providing a pseudoscientific basis for discrimination. But he was best known as a popular science writer, penning three hundred essays that were originally published in Natural History Magazine.
Dinosaur in a Haystack collects thirty-four of these essays, most notably the title piece, which discusses how rates of fossil survival influence theories of mass extinction, and “Dinomania”, his review of the film Jurassic Park and astute analysis of the explosion of interest in dinosaurs during the late 20th century. “...dinosaurs were just as big, as fierce, and as extinct forty years ago, but only a few nerdy kids, and even fewer professional palaentologists, gave a damn about them... why now and not before?”
The recipients of this volume were Richard and Judy Milner. Richard and Gould were childhood friends, and Richard eventually became a historian of science and Gould’s editor at Natural History Magazine. “In 1953, two sixth graders in Bayside, Queens, became best friends after they discovered their shared passions for Gilbert & Sullivan operas, dinosaurs, the American Museum of Natural History and Charles Darwin. In their pantheon of heroes, Darwin ranked above even Joe DiMaggio. Their classmates, of course, considered them geeks and bestowed appropriate nicknames: Fossilface and Dino. Fossilface grew up to become an evolutionary biologist better known as Stephen Jay Gould” (Tierney, “Darwin the Comedian”, The New York Times, 9 February, 2009). - ...Reflections in Natural History. New York: Harmony Books, 1995.
Octavo. Original black quarter cloth, black boards, title to spine in red. With the dust jacket. Illustrations within the text. A fine copy in the jacket.
Hansen, James | Storms of My Grandchildren
£50.00
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First edition, first printing of this important popular work by leading climate scientist James Hansen (1941 - ).
Hansen, currently director of the Program on Climate Science, Awareness and Solutions at Columbia University, has been studying climate change since the 1970s, making important contributions to our understanding of the atmosphere of Venus; how the global average temperature is measured and calculated; the effects of black carbon (such as that produced by forest fires and burning coal); and the design and analysis of climate models, showing that climate change has been occurring faster than most early models predicted.
Hansen first came to public prominence when he testified to Congress in 1988 on the causes and effects of climate change, and in recent years he has been an outspoken activist, critical of ineffectual mitigation policies, and being arrested three times during 2011 demonstrations against the Keystone Pipeline. Storms of My Grandchildren explains the science of anthropogenic climate change, why it threatens humanity’s future, discusses the political issues that kept it from being adequately addressed, and proposes a way foreword for the economy and environment. -
...The Truth about the Coming Climate Catastrophe and Our Last Chance to Save Humanity. Illustrations by Makiko Sato. New York: Bloomsbury, 2009.
Octavo. Original black boards, titles to spine in silver. With the dust jacket. Illustrations and charts within the text. Spine a little rolled. An excellent, fresh copy in the bright jacket.
Hassard, Annie | Floral Decorations for the Dwelling House
£250.00
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First edition, and a lovely copy, of this delightful work on flower arrangements and indoor plants that was highly praised by contemporaries.
By 1875, botanical pursuits such as flower and fern collecting, pressing, and arranging had been a major hobby for British women for at least a generation. Floral Decorations for the Dwelling House expanded on the work of earlier authors, such as A. E. Maling (Flowers for Ornament and Decoration, 1875), by adding advice on living plants in addition to cut flowers. It “offers a very detailed account, both practically and artistically oriented, of the best plants and best pieces of equipment to use for a wide variety of indoor plant and flower decorations, from bouquets to dining tables, window displays, hanging baskets and Christmas decorations, as well as giving advice on how best to arrange them” (Sparke, Nature Inside, p. 48).
The book was praised in the January 1876 issue of The Floral World and Garden Guide as “a systematic treatise on the subject. The truth is, the gifted author of this stands alone and far in advance of all competitors, whether as an exhibitor or a judge of exhibitions, whether in the preparation of a bouquet for a princess or the decoration of a grand saloon for an important public ceremony”. In that year an American edition was published by Macmillan, in which additional emphasis was placed on living plants in decorative schemes (Sparke).
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...A Practical Guide to the Home Arrangement of Plants and Flowers. With Numerous Illustrations. London: Macmillan & Co., 1875. Octavo. Original green cloth elaborately blocked in gilt and black with floral designs on the spine and upper board, brown coated endpapers. Burn & Co. binder’s ticket to the rear pastedown. 9 steel engraved plates, steel engravings throughout the text. Single leaf of ads at rear. Blind stamp of the W. H. Smith lending library to the front free endpaper. Cloth only very lightly rubbed at the extremities with a few small marks, a few light spots to the title. An excellent copy.
Hill, Justina | Germs and the Man
£100.00
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First edition, first printing, presentation copy inscribed by the author on the front free endpaper, “Inscribed for Dr. G. A. C. Colston, from his long-time associate, Justine Hill, Baltimore, Mar 26, 1940”.
This work on disease-causing microbes was described as “the best popular presentation that had yet appeared” on the subject by psychiatrist Karl Menninger (Ogilvie, Biographical Dictionary of Women in Science, p. 601). Author Justina Hill (1893-?) attended Smith College and the University of Michigan, then served as a Red Cross worker, running a bacteriological laboratory in Spartanburg, South Carolina during the final two years of the First World War. She was then transferred with a Smith College unit to the Near East, where she ran a laboratory for five thousand refugees. “Upon returning to the United States, Hill was made an associate in bacteriology at the Brady Urological Institute and two years later an instructor in urology... She published numerous technical articles in medical journals as well as popular books on bacteriology” (Ogilvie). In 1942 she published Silent Enemies, on the communicable diseases of war, and in 1944 she contributed a piece in the Atlantic: “How Bad is the Flu? The possibility of recurrent epidemics, perhaps of increasing virulence, even of another pandemic, must be faced”.
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New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1940.
Octavo. Original buff cloth, titles to spine and upper board blocked in green, decorative design blocked in brown, top edge dyed green. 8 double-sided plates. Light rubbing at the extremities, small bump to the edge of the lower board, small white spot to spine, slight abrasions and creasing to the edges of a few leaves, some light spotting to the plates. A very good copy.
Horner, John [Jack] R. & James Gorman | Digging Dinosaurs
£75.00
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First edition, first printing. A lovely copy of this important memoir of excavating Egg Mountain in Montana, one of the most productive fossil beds on earth and the location of both the first dinosaur embryos and the first nests of baby dinosaurs to be discovered.
John “Jack” Horner (1946 – ) is one of the most recognisable of contemporary palaeontologists. The recipient of numerous awards, including a McArthur Fellowship, for his work on dinosaur reproduction, development, and physiology, he was also a staple of 1980s and 90s documentaries and served as a technical advisor for the Jurassic Park films, whose main character, Dr. Alan Grant, he partially inspired. Horner has come under scrutiny in recent years for having a romantic relationship with an undergraduate volunteer in his laboratory, resulting in his early retirement.
In 1977 Marion Brandvold, the owner of a mineral shop in Bynum, Montana, discovered fossils of juvenile dinosaurs and asked Horner to identify them when he happened to stop at the shop during a scouting trip the following year. At the time, only a handful of juvenile dinosaurs were known, and their absence in the geological record was a major problem for palaeontology. Realising their significance, Horner immediately contacted his employers at Princeton (remarkably, he was then working as a preparator of other researcher’s finds, and had not yet run a dig of his own) for permission to remain in Montana and begin excavating the site. Within a few days Horner, his colleague Bob Makela, and the Brandvolds had uncovered whole nests containing young duck-billed dinosaurs – a world first. The juveniles were clearly being cared for by their parents for an extended period, much like birds, and this discovery was the first evidence of complex reproductive behaviour in dinosaurs. The site also revealed the first egg clutches in the Western hemisphere and the first dinosaur embryos found anywhere. Excavations have since revealed that the site was home to thousands of Cretaceous-period dinosaurs, with evidence of more than 15,000 individuals, making it the largest group of dinosaur skeletons on Earth and evidence that some species exhibited social and possibly migratory behaviours (”Digging for Dino Eggs with Famed Paleontologist Jack Horner”, Wired, October 28, 2011).
Published in 1988, Digging Dinosaurs was written for a popular audience and covers the first six years of excavations, including the major discoveries of nests and embryos, and includes a foreword by Sir David Attenborough as well as numerous illustrations.
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...Illustrated by Donna Braginetz and Kris Ellingsen. New York: Workman Publishing, 1988.
Octavo. Original black boards, black cloth backstrip, titles to spine gilt, red endpapers. With the dust jacket. 4 double-sided plates from colour photographs, black and white illustrations throughout the text. Spine rolled. An excellent copy in the fresh dust jacket.
Jeans, James | The Stars in Their Courses
£150.00
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First edition, first impression. Rare in the jacket and much less common than the US edition published by Macmillan in the same year. This copy with the bookplate of Edward Beldam Diver, London manager of the Cambridge University Press (The Historical Register of the University of Cambridge. Supplement, 1921-1930).
Author James Jeans (1877-1946) was a respected Cambridge mathematician and astronomer, best known for his work on rotating, gravitational bodies, "a problem of fundamental importance that had already been tackled by some of the leading mathematicians" (ODNB), and the motions, structures, and life-cycles of stars and stellar clusters.
"In 1928 Jeans's academic work Astronomy and Cosmogony came to the attention of S. C. Roberts, the secretary of Cambridge University Press, who appreciated the general interest of its subject matter and the attraction of Jeans's writing style. He persuaded Jeans to write a popular account, The Universe Around Us, which was published by the press in 1929" (ODNB). Jeans' popularity as a writer "depended partly on his topic — new, thought provoking views of the universe — and partly on his style, which combined an authoritative knowledge of the subject with a vivid turn of phrase" (ODNB).
The present volume was his third popular work, with the dust jacket prominently advertising the previous two. It is based on a series of radio broadcasts written for listeners with no previous scientific knowledge, and with the hope of introducing them to “the fascination of modern astronomy” and “the wonder of the universe we see through the giant telescopes of to-day” (preface).
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Cambridge: at the University Press, 1931.
Octavo. Original blue cloth, titles to spine gilt. With the dust jacket. Black and white frontispiece and 46 plates, 2 folding astronomical charts. Contemporary bookplate of Edward Beldam Diver. Spine very slightly faded, cloth a little rubbed at the tips. A very good copy in the rubbed and creased jacket with tanned spine panel and some nicks and small chips.
Johnston, James F. W. | The Chemistry of Common Life
£250.00
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First complete edition of this popular Victorian work on the chemistry of the everyday, published in two volumes the year after the first volume appeared.
Author James F. W. Johnston (1796-1855) was a chemist and lecturer, and together with David Brewster one of the founders of the British Association for the Advancement of Science. His association with J. J. Berzelius “brought him prestige and fuelled his interest in the way atoms might be arranged in compounds; though chemical atomic theory was still very hypothetical in the 1830s, some inferences could be made. In 1837 he wrote an important report for the British Association meeting at Newcastle upon Tyne, on the relationship between chemical constitution and properties. In 1833 Johnston was appointed reader in chemistry at the newly founded and staunchly Anglican University of Durham, despite belonging to the Church of Scotland. At Durham he strenuously promoted a course in engineering, which involved highly practical work and some advanced chemistry and mathematics... Johnston became a successful popular lecturer and writer at a time when such activity did not diminish a professional reputation. In 1851 he published Notes on North America, following a visit there in 1849–50. This was concerned particularly with agriculture, on which he had become an expert—a good move in the ‘hungry Forties’. His brief Catechism of Agricultural Chemistry and Geology (1844) went through more than thirty editions in his lifetime, was widely translated, and was recommended by Tolstoy among others, and his more formal Elements of Agricultural Chemistry and Geology (1842) was also a great success, with a nineteenth edition in 1895. He provided introduction and notes for the Dutch professor G. T. Mulder's Chemistry of Vegetable and Animal Physiology (1845) and for Mulder's controversial claims against Liebig published in the following year. His Chemistry of Common Life, which was completed in 1855 just before his death, was a classic popularization of up-to-date science” (ODNB).
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Edinburgh & London: William Blackwood and Sons, 1855.
2 volumes, octavo (178 x 113 mm). Contemporary brown half calf, spines gilt in compartments, red morocco labels, marbled sides, endpapers, and edges. Steel engravings throughout the text. H7 and 8 unopened. Lacking the ads normally present. Bindings rubbed, occasional light spotting to contents. A very good set.
Leakey, Mary | Olduvai Gorge. My Search for Early Man
£100.00
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First edition, first impression and a fine copy, uncommon in such nice condition.
Mary Leakey (1913-1996) was an accomplished archaeologist and paleoanthropologist who worked primarily on early humanoid fossils in Kenya and Tanzania with her husband and scientific partner Louis Leakey. “The site that will always be associated with Mary Leakey is Olduvai Gorge, a canyon in northern Tanzania containing rich collections of fossils and artefacts spanning about the last 2 million years. This became her second home, where she enjoyed fieldwork and research, accompanied by her pack of beloved dalmatian dogs, of which she was a well-known breeder. At Olduvai on 17 July 1959 she made one of the most famous fossil discoveries of all time, the skull of a 1.8 million-year-old early human relative whom Louis named Zinjanthropus (now Australopithecus or Paranthropus) boisei. Television coverage of the find made the Leakeys household names all over the world and brought them desperately needed funding from the National Geographic Society. Mary laboured under the hot sun, meticulously recording scatters of early stone tools and fossil bones, setting new standards for archaeological fieldwork, while Louis concentrated on fund-raising and lecturing. The technical details of her work are published in volumes 3 (1971) and 5 (1994) of the Olduvai Gorge series of Cambridge University Press and a popular account is given in Olduvai Gorge: My Search for Early Man (1979)” (ODNB).
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London: Collins, 1979.
Octavo. Original red boards, titles to spine gilt. With the dust jacket. 6 double-sided plates from black and white photographs, line drawings throughout the text. A fine copy in the jacket.
Leffall, LaSalle D. | No Boundaries. A Cancer Surgeon's Odyssey.
£250.00
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First edition, first printing of the autobiography of one of the world’s leading cancer surgeons. Presentation copy inscribed by the author to columnist William Safire on the title, “To Bill Safire, with best wishes & thanks for all you do for so many at Dana and the New York Times, Lasalle D. Leffall, 9/27/06.”
LaSalle D. Leffall (1930-2019) graduated first in his class from the Howard University School of Medicine and served as a senior fellow in cancer surgery at Memorial Sloane-Kettering, which he chose because “I thought surgery was the most dynamic field” and “Memorial Sloane-Kettering was using some of the most exciting techniques” (Krapp, Notable Black American Scientists, p. 205). In 1962 he joined the faculty of Howard, rising to chair of the department of surgery only eight years later.
Leffall “focused on clinical studies of cancer of the breast, colorectum, head, and neck,” publishing more than 116 journal articles across his career. He became the first Black president of the American Cancer Society in 1978, and “used this national forum to emphasize the problems of cancer in minorities, holding the first conference on cancer among Black Americans in February 1979” (Krapp). Leffalle also served as the first Black president of the American College of Surgeons, was a visiting professor at more than 200 institutions, and received numerous awards. In 1996 Howard University established an endowed chair in surgery in his name.
Bill Safire (1929-2009) began his career as a public relations executive before joining the Nixon campaign in 1960, working as a speechwriter for both Nixon and Agnew. In 1978 he began a nearly thirty year-long career as a New York Times political columnist. Lefall’s mention of “Dana” in the inscription references the Charles A. Dana Foundation, a private charity supporting brain research, of which Safire was chief executive and chairman and Leffalle a member of the board of directors. This copy of No Boundaries was inscribed to Safire at a Dana Foundation event, “Can Immunology Help Win the War on Cancer?” at which Leffall was one of the panellists, and which was followed by a reception and signing to celebrate the book’s publication.
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Washington D. C.: Howard University Press, 2005.
Octavo. Original black boards, titles to spine gilt. With the dust jacket. 8 double-sided plates from photographs. Only the lightest rubbing and a few minor creases to the jacket. A superb, fresh copy.
Maryańska, Teresa | O Gadach bez Sensacji
£250.00
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First edition, first impression. A rare copy of this charming, illustrated booklet on dinosaurs published by Warsaw’s Museum of the Earth. WorldCat only locates one copy, at the National Library of Poland. The detailed edition statement records that this book was submitted for typesetting in October 1969 and approved for printing in March 1970, with the order number dated 1969, for a total of 5,200 copies. Though the date 1979 appears above the statement, this is a typo, likely for 1970 (many thanks to Philip Penka of Bernett Penka Rare Books for the translation).
Author Teresa Maryańska (1937-2019)) was a leading dinosaur palaeontologist associated with the Museum of the Earth at the Polish Academy of Sciences in Warsaw, where she as vice-director between 1976 and 2006. “Her research was initially on invertebrate palaeontology. Her thesis concerned the Bryozoa, but she was always interested in vertebrates and looked for an opportunity to study them. Eventually, she was invited to participate in the Polish-Mongolian Palaeontological Expeditions to the Gobi desert, and became an active, highly appreciated participant of all four expeditions” (Borsuk-Białynicka & Jakubowski, “In Memoriam: Teresa Maryańska”, Acta Palaeontologica, volume 64, number 4, 2019).
Maryańska’s first dinosaur research was on the ankylosaurs, and her magnum opus on their anatomy and taxonomy was published in 1977. She then worked on specimens of the pacycephalosaurs, protoceratopsians, and hadrosaurs, and oviraptors, and many of her discoveries were made while working closely with her colleague and friend Halszka Osmólska (1930-2008). She was also a co-author of several chapters of The Dinosauria, one of the most important scholarly reference works on dinosaurs, first published in 1990 and “unparalleled for its comprehensiveness at the time” (Borsuk-Białynicka). -
Warsaw: Wydawnictwa Geologiczne, Muzeum Ziemi pan Warszawa, 1970.
Duodecimo. Original yellow wrappers printed in black with a black and white photo of fossilised dinosaur skin to the upper wrapper. Folding map. Diagrams and illustrations from black and white photographs throughout the text. Contemporary price sticker to the rear cover. Wrappers a little tanned and rubbed, tail of spine bumped. A very good copy.
Max Rigo Selling Company | International Aviation Meet. Grant Park Chicago. Panoramic Post Card.
£850.00
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A striking, oversized panoramic postcard photomontage depicting one of the most important aviation events prior to the First World War, the August 1911 International Aviation Meet at Grant Park in Chicago.
The Chicago meet was the largest airshow held up to that time, only eight years after the first powered flight by the Wright Brothers. Over the course of nine days thirty-three amateur and professional aviators competed for cash prizes totalling just over $100,000, watched by an estimated 300,000 spectators. Lincoln Beachey, the world’s premiere stunt pilot, set a world altitude record of 11,642 feet and two pilots, William R. Badger and St. Croix Johnstone, died in crashes.
This postcard is a fantastical composite image depicting the airshow, incorporating photographs of the lakefront buildings, Grant Park, railway tracks, and crowd shots, and all merging into painted backdrops and “crowds”. Fourteen planes are visible in the sky, and while most are painted, a few may have originally have been photographs. Another three are depicted on the ground or taking off, surrounded by people. This copy of the card was posted by “Laurie” of 1859 Sedgwick St, which is adjacent to Lincoln Park on the north side of town, and the recipient was “Miss Florence Ort” of Defiance Ohio. Laurie has additionally annotated the image, labelling for her friend Michigan Avenue, the famous Blackstone Hotel, opened just two years previously, the Auditorium theatre, and the Art Institute of Chicago.
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Chicago, IL: Max Rigo, 1911.
Folding panoramic postcard (290 x 195 mm). Professionally mounted, glazed, and framed using archival materials. Composite photographic image depicting the Chicago lakefront and early planes. The sender’s and receiver’s details filled out in black ink, and four landmarks noted on the image in the same hand. Marks from stamp, some toning and spotting of the verso, creasing and wear, particularly near the original folds (which are fragile) and at the corners and slightly affecting the image, small tape repair to one corner on the verso. Very good condition.
Morgan, Ann Haven | Field Book of Animals in Winter
£150.00
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First edition, first printing and a lovely copy in the dust jacket. The Field Book of Animals in Winter is much less common than Morgan’s book on ponds and streams, and is rarely found in such nice condition.
As a child, Ann Haven Morgan (1882-1966) developed a love of nature by exploring the areas around her home in Connecticut. She earned her bachelor’s degree and doctorate at Cornell, the latter under James G. Needham at the Limnological Laboratory.
Returning to Cornell, “she advanced steadily up the academic ladder, becoming a full professor in 1918. During the summer she conducted research and taught courses on echinoderms at the Marine Biological Laboratory, Woods Hole... Although limnology (the study of inland waters) was her special subject – on which she wrote a useful book, Field Book of Ponds and Streams (1930) – Morgan was also interested in many other facets of zoology, particularly hibernating animals. Her Field Book of Animals in Winter (1939) reflected this interest. In 1949 the Encyclopaedia Britannica made it into an educational film” (Ogilvie, Biographical Dictionary of Women in Science p. 913).
Among her other scientific interests were conservation and ecology and educational reform. Morgan was a member of numerous professional societies, including the American Entomological Society, American Society of Naturalists, American Society of Zoologists, and the New York Herpetological Society. She was prominent enough to be one of only three women included in the 1933 edition of American Men of Science. -
...With 283 Illustrations, Including 4 Full-Colour Plates. New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1939.
Octavo. Original blue cloth, titles to spine gilt, all edges dyed red. With the dust jacket. Photographic frontispiece and 14 plates of which 11 are double-sided, including 2 double-sided colour illustrations. Numerous illustrations within the text. Yellow pencil sometimes used to highlight passages, primarily in the early chapters. A few tiny bumps at the edges of the cloth. An excellent, fresh copy in a very attractive example of the dust jacket that is lightly rubbed with some small nicks and chips, a little creasing at the edges, and mild toning of the spine panel.
Neurath, Marie | Inside the Atom
Sold Out
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RESERVED First edition, first impression of this important work of science illustration by data-visualisation pioneer Marie Neurath (1898-1986).
Neurath, together with her husband Otto and their colleague Gerd Arntz, was one of the founders of Isotype, a simplified visual method of displaying complex information to the public. First developed in the 1920s, and originally known as the Vienna Method of Pictorial Statistics, the goal of Isotype was ”to cross national and social divides in a time before widespread global communication. To do that, Isotype went back to basics and stripped away all things unnecessary, illogical, or alienating—and in doing so, helped to establish some of the core principles of graphic design. Today, Isotype’s legacy can be seen everywhere from newspapers and textbooks to signage, transit maps, interfaces, and emojis” (Inglis, “Meet Marie Neurath,” AIGA Eye on Design, September 17, 2019).
Marie Neurath “was a remarkable practitioner” who “researched, calculated, and co-designed nearly every Isotype ever created, from the early days in Vienna in 1925 all the way to when she retired in 1971” (Forrest, “The Missing Legacy of Marie Neurath,” Medium, January 20, 2020). She described her role as that of the “Transformer” of data, writing that “From the data given in words and figures, a way has to be found to extract the essential facts and put them into picture form. It is the responsibility of the transformer to understand the data, to get all necessary information from the expert, to decide what is worth transmitting to the public, how to make it understandable, how to link it with general knowledge or with information already given in other charts. In this sense, the transformer is the trustee of the public” (Neurath, The Transformer, 2009).
Marie continued the work after Otto’s death in 1945, becoming best known for the series of children’s books she published over the next twenty years. “In children’s educational books Marie found an ideal place to put Isotype’s methods into practice. Young readers were more engaged by pictures than words, and this focus on the visual meant these books were easily translated and published abroad, fulfilling Isotype’s original aims of being truly international” (Inglis).
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London: Max Parrish, Isotype. Printed by Graphic Reproductions Ltd., 1956.
Quarto. Original red cloth-patterned boards, titles to spine and upper board, and crystal design to upper board gilt. 3-colour offset lithography. Corners bumped, spine rolled, boards darkened corresponding to jacket chips, contents toned with occasional small spots, spotting to edges of text block. A good copy in the dulled and marked jacket with chips from the corners and ends of the spine, and a closed tear running halfway up the spine panel.
Norman, David & Angela Milner | Eyewitness Books: Dinosaur
£150.00
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First edition, first impression of Dinosaur, one of the earliest titles in the best-selling Eyewitness Books series, together with the first printing of the American edition, published in the same year. Copies of the first printings of the 1980s Eyewitness books are scarce, particularly in such beautiful condition.
The publisher Dorling Kindersley was founded in London 1974, and in the 1980s began taking advantage of new design technologies to radically revise the traditional page layouts of children’s books. As they described to Children’s Software Review in 1997, the goal was to “slow down the pictures and speed up the text”, allowing children to “experience information from their own particular point of view” (cited by Stringham, “The Efficacy of Small Multiples in the Visual Language of Instructional Designs”, Brigham Young University thesis, 2012). "What DK did—with almost revolutionary panache—was essentially to reinvent nonfiction books by breaking up the solid pages of gray type that had previously been their hallmark, reducing the text to bite-size, nonlinear nuggets that were then surrounded by pictures that did more than adorn—they also conveyed information. Usually full color, they were so crisply reproduced they seemed to leap off the page” (Cart, “Eyewitness Books: Putting the Graphic in Lexographic”, Booklist, October 15, 2002). There are now more than 100 Eyewitness Books, and more than 50 million copies have been sold in thirty-six languages.
The first Eyewitness Books were published in 1988, and Dinosaur appeared the following year, one of the first sixteen in the series and still in print today. Its authors are both prominent palaeontologists. Angela Milner, of the Natural History Museum in London, has done important work on archaeopteryx, providing evidence in the debate over whether it was a bird or dinosaur. David Norman is curator of vertebrate paleontology at Cambridge University’s Sedgwick Museum. In 2017 he and two other paleontologists made the case for a complete revaluation of early dinosaur evolution and taxonomy, arguing that the two main dinosaur clades were more closely related than previously understood.
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London & New York: Dorling Kinderseley, Ltd. & Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., 1989.
2 volumes, tall quarto. Original glossy white boards illustrated with photos, dinosaur-patterned endpapers. Colour illustrations throughout. The London printing has faint toning of the front free endpaper, the New York printing is lightly rubbed at the tips. An excellent, fresh set.
Pagé, Victor W. (ed.) | Henley's ABC of Gliding and Sailflying
£100.00
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First UK edition, originally published in the US in the previous year. An attractive copy and uncommon in the jacket.
The earliest successful glider was created by the British aeronautical designer Sir George Cayley and flown in 1853, initiating a wave of research into both unpowered and powered flight, and gliders had become relatively sophisticated by the time the Wright Brothers flew the first powered aircraft in 1903. It wasn’t until the 1920s, however, that gliding became an organised sport, making this an early popular guide for the beginner. Heavily illustrated, it contains information on the mechanics of flight; the different types of gliders, including powered gliders and water gliders; glider design and construction; and detailed chapters on key components such as brakes, control cables, fuselage, and wing frames.
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London: Chapman & Hall, Ltd., 1931.
Duodecimo. Original blue cloth, title to spine gilt, publisher’s logo to upper bard in blind. With the dust jacket. Photographic frontispiece, illustrations throughout the text. Ownership inscription dated 1943 to the front free endpaper. Cloth very lightly rubbed at the extremities but otherwise bright and fresh, faint partial toning to the endpapers, faint spotting to the endpapers and edges of text block. An excellent copy in the rubbed and tanned jacket with some spots and marks and an over-price ticket to the spine panel.
Patterson, Flora W. & Vera K. Charles | Mushrooms and Other Common Fungi
£35.00
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First edition of this well-illustrated guide to mushroom identification for the amateur collector.
The first female mycologist to work at the United States Department of Agriculture, Flora Patterson (1847-1928) exhibited “the tenacity, audacity, and perspicacity of a true scientific visionary” (Reynolds, “Flora Patterson”, Women in Microbiology, p. 219). She initially studied fungi as a childhood hobby, then attended several universities as a non-traditional student, taking a plant pathology course at Iowa State and completing her education at Radcliffe College, from where she was able to work in the Harvard Grey Herbarium.
At the USDA Patterson “published on edible and poisonous mushrooms and on fungus diseases of economic importance, working and publishing with the mycologist Vera Charles” (Ogilvie, p. 990). Patterson directed the US National Fungus Collections for nearly thirty years, growing it from 19,000 to 115,000 specimens. She was in charge of identifying fungal diseases of agricultural importance, and made numerous important contributions in this area, including the identification of chestnut blight and pineapple rot. Her involvement in Japan’s gift of cherry trees to the US led to the passage of the Plant Quarantine Act of 1912.
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Washington D.C.: Government Printing Office for the United States Department of Agriculture, 1915.
Octavo. Original cream wrappers printed in black. 38 plates from photographs. Wrappers faintly toned, mild dampstain affecting the lower corner of the wrappers and text, with some abraded areas where the corners of the leaves have stuck together, not generally affecting text. Very good condition.
Peck, Leilani, Leonora Moragne, et al | Focus on Food
£50.00
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First edition. One of the authors of this home economics textbook was the prominent Black nutrition scientist Lenora Moragne (1931-2020) who worked as a hospital dietician before earning her doctorate at Cornell.
“With an illustrious career that spanned 60 years, Moragne held positions in hospitals, industry, nutrition publishing, academia and government. Her positions within the federal government include head of nutrition education and training for the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food and Nutrition Service; nutrition coordinator at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services; and a professional staff member for Sen. Bob Dole (Kan.), specializing in nutrition. She was the first professional female (of any race or ethnic group) to be employed by the Senate Agriculture Committee. From 1970 until she was recruited by Dole, Moragne taught at Hunter College and was the college’s first African American professor. During her years in Washington, D.C., she wrote nutrition legislation, improved school lunch programs and developed a pamphlet titled ‘Nutrition and Your Health…Dietary Guidelines for Americans 1990.’ Moragne often traveled throughout the U.S. to promote nutrition and dietetics and delivered lectures to nutrition professionals” (”Remembering Leonora Morage”, Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics Foundation website, February 5th 2021).
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New York: Webster Division, McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1974.
Quarto. Original orange laminate boards printed in green and purple. Colour illustrations throughout. Binding a little rubbed and bumped, mild waviness to text block. A very good copy.
Perry, John | The Romance of Science. Spinning Tops.
£75.00
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Second edition, first published in 1890. A nice copy of this book which is scarce in all early editions. Copiously illustrated and in the attractive publisher’s cloth. Unusually, there is a contemporary pencilled note on the dedication leaf stating “no! no!!” in reference to the printed acknowledgement of Sir William Thomson as “the real author of whatever is worth publication in the following pages”.
Electrical engineer and mathematician John Perry (1850-1920) lectured at the Royal College of Science and the School of Mines in London (part of Imperial College from 1907), and also developed a number of important instruments for the rapidly expanding electrical industry. After retiring from teaching, Perry "continued to pursue his interest in spinning tops, a subject on which he had lectured and published often since 1890, and which embodied his wide-ranging concerns from engineering to cosmology" (ODNB).
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...The "Operatives Lecture" of the British Association, Meeting at Leeds, 6th September, 1890. With Numerous Illustrations. Published under the direction of the general literature committee. London, Brighton, & New York: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1901.
Octavo. Original red cloth blocked in gilt and black with an image of a gyroscope on the upper board. Engraved frontispiece and engravings throughout the text. 8 pages of separately paginated publisher’s ads at rear. Ink ownership signature of B. G. Davies to the half title, pencilled remark “No! no!!” to the dedication leaf. Spine slightly rolled, lower corner bumped, cloth a little rubbed and marked with some waviness on the spine, contents tanned in the margins. Very good condition.
Robertson-Miller, Ellen. Butterfly and Moth Book
Sold Out
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First edition, first printing. A beautiful copy of this uncommon and attractively designed work on butterflies and moths with numerous illustrations by the author.
Ellen Bell Robertson-Miller (1859-1937) was a noted painter, naturalist, and columnist who studied at the National Academy of Design and the Art Students’ League of New York. In addition to entomology, Robertston-Miller was interested in marine life and ornithology, and often held speaking engagements and published articles on natural subjects. She was co-author of Wild Flowers of the North-Eastern States (1895) with Margaret Christine Whiting.
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...Personal Studies and Observations of the More Familiar Species. With Illustrations from Drawings by the Author and Photographs by J. Lyonel King, G. A. Bash, Dr. F. D. Snyder and Others. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1912.
Octavo. Original grey cloth elaborately blocked with an Art Nouveau design of a yellow swallowtail butterfly to the upper board and spine, buff endpapers. Photographic frontispiece with tissue guard, illustrations throughout the text from both photographs and drawings. Bookplate of John M. Witheridge. Fine condition.
Rothschild, Miriam & Theresa Clay | Fleas, Flukes and Cuckoos
£60.00
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First edition, first impression of this classic by a leading British parasitologist.
Miriam Rothschild (1908-2005) was a member of the prominent banking family and was introduced to zoology by her father, an amateur naturalist, and her physician uncle. Though Rothschild had only a limited formal education, she was intellectually self-directed and was recommended for study at the Naples Biological Station, where she “developed a strong interest in parasitology, noting that the molluscs with which she was working were infected with flatworms” (Ogilvie, Biographical Dictionary of Women in Science, p. 1128). She then went to the Biological Station at Plymouth where she continued researching parasites and their hosts until her laboratory was bombed during the Second World War.
During the war Rothschild opened her childhood home to refugees and worked with Alan Turing on the Enigma project. “In addition to her active war work, she continued with her natural history investigations, cataloguing her father’s collections and studying human and animal parasites, especially fleas. She studied flea reproduction, their host preferences, and the mechanics of flea leaping. In collaboration with Nobel laureate Tadeus reichstein, she demonstrated the manner in which the monarch caterpillar’s diet of milkweed plants protects it from birds and other predators” (Ogilvie). Rothschild published more than three hundred scientific articles in addition to several successful popular works, and 2,000 of her microscope slides are now part of the Natural History Museum collections.
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...A Study of Bird Parasites. With 90 Black and White Photographs, 4 Maps & 22 Drawings. London: Collins, 1952.
Octavo. Original green cloth, titles to spine gilt. With the dust jacket. 20 plates, illustrations within the text. Cloth very slightly faded along the edges of the boards, gilt spine titles dulled, light partial toning of the free endpapers. A very good copy in the rubbed and dulled jacket with two closed tears and associated creasing at the top of the upper panel, as well as a few other small nicks and a crease along the fold of the upper flap.
Schultes, Richard Evans & Albert Hofmann | Plants of the Gods. Origins of Hallucinogenic Use
£500.00
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First edition, first printing of this key reference on hallucinogenic plants by two leaders of the 20th-century psychedelics movement. Copies in fine condition such as this one are particularly uncommon.
Widely considered the founder of modern ethnobotany, Richard Schultes (1915-2001) spent most of his career travelling the Amazon, where he consulted with indigenous people and investigated the plants they used for religious and medicinal purposes. His co-author, Albert Hoffman (1906-2008), was the Swiss chemist who first synthesised LSD and discovered its hallucinogenic effects, and who later isolated psilocybin and psilocin, the primary psychedelic compounds in mushrooms. This volume, copiously illustrated and written for a popular audience, describes the primary species of psychoactive plants and explores their use around the world and throughout history.
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New York: McGraw-Hill, 1979.
Quarto. Original green cloth, title to spine and design to upper board gilt. With the dust jacket. Colour illustrations throughout. A fine copy.
Shields, E. Floyd | Coachella Valley Desert Trails and The Romance and Sex Life of the Date
£85.00
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First edition of this charming tourist booklet promoting the Coachella Valley and Shields Date Gardens, the famous “home of the date shake” on Highway 111 in Indio, California.
Date agriculture was introduced to the Coachella Valley when the US Department of Agriculture set up an experimental station in the region in 1904. “In the following decades, crop production grew exponentially, from approximately 100,000 pounds in 1919 to 1 million pounds in 1926, and then by 1955 to 48 million pounds of dates” (Conrad, “From Experiment to Celebrated Product, Dates Find a Home in Coachella Valley”, The Desert Sun.) Today the valley is home to the majority of US date farms.
The Shields Date Gardens were founded by E. Floyd and Bess Shields in 1924. Floyd was a pioneering agriculturist who developed several of his own date varieties and invented products like date sugar and date crystals for use in cooking, including in the date milkshakes sold at the gardens. He was an indefatigable marketer, directing tourists to the farm shop with a giant knight in armour, the “guardian of quality”, and offering lectures on date cultivation to the public. “The lectures proved to be a popular draw, leading Shields to incorporate a slide show and recorded soundtrack into a multimedia production. The 15-minute presentation, ‘The Romance and Sex Life of the Date,’ modified only slightly over the years, is still shown today in a small theater” (Sellers, “A Date in the Desert, California Bountiful, the California Farm Bureau, March/April 2009).
This guidebook directs tourists to local sites in “the land of romance and sunshine”, including 29 Palms and Joshua Tree (created as a National Park only fifteen years previously), the Salton Sea, Palm Springs, Painted Canyon, the All American Canal, and the annual “Arabian Nights” pageant. The second half is based on ‘The Romance and Sex Life of the Date’. Well-illustrated from photographs taken on the Shields’ farm, it focuses on the difficulty of propagating, caring for, and hand-pollinating the palms, and educates consumers on the economics of date agriculture, suggesting the prices they should expect to pay for high-quality fruit.
Also advertised in the booklet are Shields’ unique products, including date sugar, butter, and crystals, with suggestions and recipes for their use. “Two-thirds grapenuts and one third Shields Date Crystals make a wonderful breakfast. Shields Date Crystals can also be used dry on any kind of cereal, salads, ice cream, etc... As an after school snack for the children Shields Date Crystals will make a delicious and healthful sandwich — suggest using graham crackers.” -
Indio, CA: Shields Date Gardens, 1952.
40-page, wire-stitched pamphlet. Original buff wrappers printed in brown and orange with an image of the rising sun over a desert landscape to the upper wrapper and a cartoon of a knight pointing to the Shields farm on the lower wrapper. Illustrated throughout with photographs and maps. Partially erased price and a little light dampstain to the cover. Occasional tiny spots to contents, which are faintly toned. A clean and fresh copy in excellent condition.
Smith, Annie Lorrain | A Handbook of the British Lichens
£100.00
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First edition, first impression and a lovely copy in exceptional condition.
Smith (1854-1937) “spent her entire career as a volunteer at the British Museum of Natural History... for although she was trained in botany by Dr. Scott at the Royal College of Sciences, she was unable to choose whether to become a professional or remain an amateur... Since women were not admitted to the museum staff, she had no choice but to work for free if she wanted to work at all. She volunteered to remount a collection of recently purchased microscopical slides, and through this experience was able to prepare an exhibit of microfungi for the public gallery. From this time on she was connected with the Cryptogamic Herbarium as an unofficial worker almost continuously up to the time of her eightieth birthday... Although her earliest work was on seaweeds, she soon became fascinated with the fungi. She joined the British Mycological Society and contributed notes on new records and other papers to the Society’s Transactions. After James Crombie, who was producing a monograph on British lichens, died in 1906, Smith undertook the completion of the work. After she prepared the second volume, she reworked the first... this two-volume set became a standard work. She also prepared a small Handbook in 1921 and in the same year produced her encyclopaedic volume on lichens, which was one of the Cambridge Botanical Handbooks” (Ogilvie, Biographical Dictionary of Women in Science, p. 1202).
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...With Ninety Figures in the Text. London: printed by order of the trustees of the British Museum, sold by B. Quaritch and at the British Museum (Natural History), 1921.
Octavo. Original green cloth over limp boards, titles to spine and British Museum of Natural History roundel to the upper board gilt, double rules to boards blocked in blind. Steel engravings throughout the text. Minor production flaw in the cloth of the upper board, very light rubbing at the tips. An excellent, fresh copy.
Smith, W. J., E. L. Turner, & C. D. Hallam | Photo-Engraving in Relief
£75.00
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First edition, first impression of this technical guide to printing from photographs, co-authored by the pioneering bird photographer and conservationist Emma Louise Turner (1867-1940).
Turner became interested in wildlife photography after meeting Richard Kearton in 1900. She joined the Royal Photographic Society the following year, and by 1904 was giving talks illustrated with her own slides. Turner was particularly interested in birds and travelled throughout the UK and in Europe to photograph them, but her main base of operations was in the Norfolk Broads, where she lived for part of each year beginning as early as 1901. This was where, in 1911, she photographed a nestling bittern, proving that the species was breeding in Britain for the first time since 1886. Another highlight of her career was the award of the Royal Photographic Society’s Gold Medal for a photograph of a great crested grebe on its nest, published in her book Broadland Birds in 1924. In 1904 Turner was elected one of the first fifteen female members of the Linnean Society, in 1909 she became one of the first four honorary female members of the British Ornithologist’s Union, and she was the only woman involved in the 1933 appeal that led to the creation of the British Trust for Ornithology.
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...A Textbook Intended for the Use of Apprentices, and Others Interested in the Technique of Photo-Engraving. London: Sir Isaac Pitman & Sons, Ltd., 1932.
Octavo. Original burgundy cloth, titles to spine and upper board gilt Frontispiece, illustrations throughout the text. Integral ads for photographic and printing supplies in the front and back matter, 24 separately-paginated pages of publisher’s ads at rear. Ownership signature of G. E. Smith to both front endpapers, inked note “no 26” to front free endpaper, library stamp of the Sun Engraving Co. of Watford to the front free endpaper and the rear pastedown. Spine rolled and a little toned, text block slightly shaken, some small marks and spots to the cloth, small nick and crease in the edge of the title page and the following leaf. Very good condition.
Taylor, Clara Mae | Food Values in Shares and Weights
£35.00
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Third printing, published the year after the first. With the ownership inscription, pencilled notes, and December 1944 report card of Eva Bernice Simmons, a student at the North Carolina College for Negroes, now North Carolina Central University.
Author Clara Mae Taylor (1989-?) attended Columbia University Teacher’s College and then taught at the Rhode Island Teacher’s College and at her alma mater. She earned her PhD in nutrition science at age forty after spending a year in research at Oxford. “During World War II, Taylor directed a research project under the Department of Agriculture that investigated energy metabolism in children. She also studied metabolism in women at different ages. Her animal experiments on white rats and guinea pigs included dietary studies, an investigation of different levels of ascorbic acid on reproduction, and studies on lactation and survival rates. During the war and the immediate post-war period, she served as a nutritional consultant to two popular women’s magazines, Woman’s Home Companion and Parents Magazine” (Ogilvie, Biographical Dictionary of Women in Science, p. 1269).
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New York: The Macmillan Company, 1943.
Tall quarto. Original grey cloth, titles to spine and upper board in black. Colour frontispiece. Contemporary inked ownership inscription to the front free endpaper, pencilled notes in the same hand to the front pastedown. Cloth rubbed and with a few small marks and spots, spine and edge of upper board tanned, edges of contents spotted. A very good copy.
Turner, E. L. | Broadland Birds
£250.00
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First and only edition of this beautifully illustrated work by pioneering bird photographer Emma Louise Turner (1867-1940), which includes the first publication of her award-winning photo of a Great Crested Grebe on its nest. This copy from the library of prominent bird photographer Eric J. Hosking (1909-1991), demonstrating the strong influence that Turner had on later generations in her field. In the introduction to their 1947 book, Masterpieces of Bird Photography, Hosking and co-author Harold Lowes lamented that they were unable to include her image of a water rail because no prints or negatives could be located.
This copy from the library of prominent bird photographer Eric J. Hosking (1909-1991), with his owl bookplate and a blank sheet of his stationery loosely inserted, as well as a Christmas card signed “Cyril, 1934”. This was likely from Cyril Newberry, a Fellow of the Royal Photographic Society employed by the London Midlands & Scottish Railway Scientific Research Laboratory, and one of Hosking’s frequent co-authors.
Author E. L. Turner became interested in photography after meeting wildlife photographer Richard Kearton in 1900. She joined the Royal Photographic Society the following year, and by 1904 was giving talks illustrated with her own slides. Turner was particularly interested in birds and travelled throughout the UK and Europe to photograph them, but her main base was in the Norfolk Broads, where she lived for part of each year beginning as early as 1901. This was where, in 1911, she photographed a nestling bittern, proving that the species was breeding in Britain for the first time since 1886. Another highlight of her career was the award of the Royal Photographic Society’s Gold Medal for a photograph of a great crested grebe on its nest, published in Broadland Birds in 1924. In 1904 Turner was elected one of the first fifteen female members of the Linnean Society. In 1909 she became one of the first four honorary female members of the British Ornithologist’s Union, and she was the only woman involved in the 1933 appeal that led to the creation of the British Trust for Ornithology.
The owner of this copy, Eric Hosking, developed his loves for nature and photography at an early age and by 1937 he was first person in Britain to make their living solely in this field. Hosking was intrepid in his pursuit of wild birds. He designed his own hides and made a number of important technical advances, among them the use of the flash in nature photography. His most famous photo is the “technically perfect” shot of a barn owl carrying prey that he captured using an electronic flash in 1948 (Sage, “A Photographer in Hiding”, New Scientist, September 1979). He is widely credited with developing wildlife photography into a mature art form. Hosking was awarded the RSPB’s Gold Medal in 1974, and three years later received an OBE. -
London: Country Life, Ltd., 1924.
Quarto. Original green quarter cloth, green boards, titles to spine gilt and to upper board in white, marbled endpapers. Frontispiece and 25 double-sided plates from photos by the author. Spine very slightly toned, boards with mottled fading as usual for this book, spotting to the contents and edges of the text block.
Turner, E. L. | Every Garden a Bird Sanctuary
£75.00
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Second impression, published the year after the first. A rare guide to gardening and managing outdoor spaces for wild birds, by the pioneering bird photographer and conservationist Emma Louise Turner.
The prominent American ornithologist Margaret Morse Nice (1883-1974) reviewed this volume for Bird Banding magazine in July, 1936, writing that, “The title of this book is an inspiration in itself. In this sane, readable little volume, Miss Turner, well-known bird photographer and student of life-history of birds, gives excellent advice, not only for garden sanctuaries, but also for woodland and marsh sanctuaries. She points out the ruthless advance of present-day civilization against the few remnants of wild life”.
Turner (1867-1940) became interested in wildlife photography after meeting Richard Kearton in 1900. She joined the Royal Photographic Society the following year, and by 1904 was giving talks illustrated with her own slides. Turner was particularly interested in birds and travelled throughout the UK and in Europe to photograph them, but her main base of operations was in the Norfolk Broads, where she lived for part of each year beginning as early as 1901. This was where, in 1911, she photographed a nestling bittern, proving that the species was breeding in Britain for the first time since 1886. Another highlight of her career was the award of the Royal Photographic Society’s Gold Medal for a photograph of a great crested grebe on its nest, published in her book Broadland Birds in 1924. In 1904 Turner was elected one of the first fifteen female members of the Linnean Society, in 1909 she became one of the first four honorary female members of the British Ornithologist’s Union, and she was the only woman involved in the 1933 appeal that led to the creation of the British Trust for Ornithology.
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...With Plates and Drawings. London: H. F. & G. Witherby, Ltd., 1935.
Octavo. Original blue cloth, titles to spine in white. With the dust jacket. Frontispiece and 7 plates from photographs by the author. Plate II detached and loosely inserted. Spine rolled and partially faded, shallow dents affecting the upper board and spine, edges of the boards a little rubbed and faded, spotting to contents and edges of text block. A very good copy in the rubbed and nicked jacket with chips from the head and tail of the tanned spine panel and ink gift inscription to the upper panel.
Turner, E. L. | Every Garden a Bird Sanctuary
£75.00
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First edition, first impression. A rare guide to gardening and managing outdoor spaces for wild birds, by the pioneering wildlife photographer and conservationist Emma Louise Turner.
The prominent American ornithologist Margaret Morse Nice (1883-1974) reviewed this volume for the journal Bird Banding in July, 1936, writing that, “The title of this book is an inspiration in itself. In this sane, readable little volume, Miss Turner, well-known bird photographer and student of life-history of birds, gives excellent advice, not only for garden sanctuaries, but also for woodland and marsh sanctuaries. She points out the ruthless advance of present-day civilization against the few remnants of wild life”.
Emma Louise Turner (1867-1940) became interested in wildlife photography after meeting Richard Kearton in 1900. She joined the Royal Photographic Society the following year, and by 1904 was giving talks illustrated with her own slides. Turner was particularly interested in birds and travelled throughout the UK and in Europe to photograph them, but her main base of operations was in the Norfolk Broads, where she lived for part of each year beginning as early as 1901. This was where, in 1911, she photographed a nestling bittern, proving that the species was breeding in Britain for the first time since 1886. Another highlight of her career was the award of the Royal Photographic Society’s Gold Medal for a photograph of a great crested grebe on its nest, published in her book Broadland Birds in 1924. In 1904 Turner was elected one of the first fifteen female members of the Linnean Society, in 1909 she became one of the first four honorary female members of the British Ornithologist’s Union, and she was the only woman involved in the 1933 appeal that led to the creation of the British Trust for Ornithology.
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...With Plates and Drawings. London: H. F. & G. Witherby, Ltd., 1935.
Octavo. Original blue cloth, titles to spine in white. Frontispiece and 7 plates from photographs by the author. Ownership signature of E. H. Stevenson to the title. Spine tanned and rolled, some small marks and bumps to the cloth, text block shaken and with spotting on the edges, light offsetting to the title. Very good condition.
Turner, E. L. | My Swans the Wylly-Wyllys and Others
£100.00
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First edition, first impression of this charming memoir of a family of mute swans by the bird photographer and conservationist Emma Louise Turner (1867-1940). As Turner explains in the introduction, the swans lived near her houseboat at Hickling Broad and the name she gave them, the “Wylly-Wyllys”, “arose out of the swan cry, ‘Wulla, wulla, wulla,’ repeated very quickly by the fen men when calling the swans”. The text follows the birds through their breeding season and also discusses some of the other species of wild swans in the area, and it is illustrated with 26 of Turner’s own photographs. Copies with the dust jacket are particularly uncommon.
Turner became interested in photography after meeting wildlife photographer Richard Kearton in 1900. She joined the Royal Photographic Society the following year, and by 1904 was giving talks illustrated with her own slides. Turner was particularly interested in birds and travelled throughout the UK and in Europe to photograph them, but her main base of operations was in the Norfolk Broads, where she lived for part of each year beginning as early as 1901. This was where, in 1911, she photographed a nestling bittern, proving that the species was breeding in Britain for the first time since 1886. Another highlight of her career was the award of the Royal Photographic Society’s Gold Medal for a photograph of a great crested grebe on its nest, published in her book Broadland Birds in 1924. In 1904 Turner was elected one of the first fifteen female members of the Linnean Society, in 1909 she became one of the first four honorary female members of the British Ornithologist’s Union, and she was the only woman involved in the 1933 appeal that led to the creation of the British Trust for Ornithology.
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London: Arrowsmith, 1932.
Octavo. Original grey cloth, titles to spine and upper board blocked in green. With the dust jacket. Frontispiece and 15 plates from photographs by the author. Contemporary gift inscriptions to the front free endpaper. Dampstain and loss of size affecting the boards but not the contents, what may be a little light brown mildew on the lower board and corresponding area of the jacket verso. A good copy in the rubbed, spotted, and dulled jacket with a chip and closed tear to the upper panel, a small chip at the head of the spine panel affecting the name of the series but not the title, and some smaller nicks and creases.
Turner, E. L. | Stray Leaves from Nature's Notebook
£50.00
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First edition, first impression of this uncommon work by the pioneering bird photographer and conservationist Emma Louise Turner (1867-1940). The contents
Turner became interested in wildlife photography after meeting Richard Kearton in 1900. She joined the Royal Photographic Society the following year, and by 1904 was giving talks illustrated with her own slides. Turner was particularly interested in birds and travelled throughout the UK and in Europe to photograph them, but her main base of operations was in the Norfolk Broads, where she lived for part of each year beginning as early as 1901. This was where, in 1911, she photographed a nestling bittern, proving that the species was breeding in Britain for the first time since 1886. Another highlight of her career was the award of the Royal Photographic Society’s Gold Medal for a photograph of a great crested grebe on its nest, published in her book Broadland Birds in 1924. In 1904 Turner was elected one of the first fifteen female members of the Linnean Society, in 1909 she became one of the first four honorary female members of the British Ornithologist’s Union, and she was the only woman involved in the 1933 appeal that led to the creation of the British Trust for Ornithology.
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London: Country Life Ltd, 1929.
Quarto. Original green cloth backed aqua boards, titles to spine and upper board in brown. Frontispiece and 23 plates from photographs by the author. Wear to the ends of the spine and board edges, spine browned, boards rubbed and dulled, spotting and offsetting to contents. A good copy.
Turner, E. L. | Togo, My Squirrel and His Lady-Friend Buda
£150.00
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First edition, first impression of this memoir of a red squirrel saved and reared by the author, the pioneering wildlife photographer and conservationist Emma Louise Turner (1867-1940). This volume was published in the Arrowsmith series The Library of Animal Friends, which also featured books by fellow photographers Frances Pitt and Cherry Kearton, and included another of Turner’s books, My Swans the Wylly-Wyllys. Uncommon in the dust jacket.
Turner became interested in wildlife photography after meeting Richard Kearton in 1900. She joined the Royal Photographic Society the following year, and by 1904 was giving talks illustrated with her own slides. Turner was particularly interested in birds and travelled throughout the UK and in Europe to photograph them, but her main base of operations was in the Norfolk Broads, where she lived for part of each year beginning as early as 1901. This was where, in 1911, she photographed a nestling bittern, proving that the species was breeding in Britain for the first time since 1886. Another highlight of her career was the award of the Royal Photographic Society’s Gold Medal for a photograph of a great crested grebe on its nest, published in her book Broadland Birds in 1924. In 1904 Turner was elected one of the first fifteen female members of the Linnean Society, in 1909 she became one of the first four honorary female members of the British Ornithologist’s Union, and she was the only woman involved in the 1933 appeal that led to the creation of the British Trust for Ornithology.
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....His Successor Tim, and Dinah and the Owls. With 25 Photographs. London: Arrowsmith, 1932.
Square octavo. Original red cloth, titles to spine and upper board in black. With the dust jacket. Frontispiece and 15 plates from photographs by the authors and others. Spine very slightly faded, cloth lightly rubbed at the extremities. A very good copy in the rubbed and dulled jacket with some creases, small chips, and short closed tears.