What Darwin Saw: Sketchbooks from the voyage of the HMS Beagle added to Cambridge Digital Library January 20, 2015 – Posted in: Content, In the Stacks, Libraries, Special Collections, Video

Charles Darwin considered it to be one of the most formative journeys of his life. His diary and scientific journal of his time aboard the HMS Beagle, now best known as The Voyage of the Beagle, was a bestseller. It was also on this voyage that the first seeds of his masterwork, Origin of Species, were planted. Now thanks to Cambridge University the entire sketchbooks of Conrad Martens, a shipmate of Darwin’s on the HMS Beagle, are…

Illustrating the Natural World October 19, 2013 – Posted in: Exhibits, Illustration

Robert Hooke’s Micrographia (1667) Last holiday season the American Museum of Natural History published Natural Histories: Extraordinary Rare Book Selections from the American Museum of Natural History. A book which allowed readers “a privileged glimpse of seldom-seen, fully illustrated scientific tomes from the American Museum of Natural History’s Rare Book Collection.” From Marcus Bloch’s 12-volume encyclopedia of fishes (1782-1795) Now they are following up the book’s success with a year-long exhibition, Natural Histories: 400 Years of Scientific Illustration from…

A Natural Selection July 17, 2012

This complete set of 108 British natural history books sold recently at Bonhams for over $8200. The New Naturalist, containing topics relevant to the British Isles, is arguably one of the most influential natural history series ever published and has been in continual publication by Collins since 1945. It was first published just after WWII ended and signaled a renewal for the beleaguered Brits at that time. In the editors’ words, it was intended to “recapture the inquiring spirit of the old naturalists” and to…

Gender-Bending Chickens and the Bookbirder Report March 15, 2010

Grrl Scientist at rest. GrrlScientist is the pseudonym of a colorful parrot who writes by typing with her beak. A science/nature/bird blogger in flight, at roost she’s an evolutionary biologist//ornithologist and freelance science and nature writer from Frankfurt am Main, Germany. Her Ph.D. is in ornithology, and she spent her two-year postdoc reconstructing the molecular phylogeny of parrots of the South Pacific Islands; somebody had to. Devorah Bennu is strictly for the birds. Based upon…