All posts in Featured Books

There are some things you just don’t expect to find in BHL, and a witch on a broomstick is one of them. So when one of our book scanners sent a few of us here at BHL an image from one of the books he was scanning, we all did a double take. Indeed, smack-dab in the middle of a book on birds was an illustration of the epitome of a Halloween hag soaring over stormy waters, surrounded by birds. So, of course, we had to ask ourselves, why is there a witch in BHL?

Earlier this week, one of our followers on Twitter, @BibliOdyssey, posted a blog post entitled “Cuban Critters” about the BHL book Histoire Physique, Politique et Naturelle de l’ile de Cuba (1838-57), by Ramón de la Sagra. The post highlights some of the incredible illustrations found within this work. We particularly like the plates on scorpions and spiders, as we had been searching for some colorful images of these creatures in our collection. This being the case, we thought it highly appropriate to highlight this book as our book of the week.

There’s no denying that, when it comes to vultures, most people feel no love lost if they fail to see them circling the skies in search of carcasses to feast upon. This sentiment is almost universally held, and so, when the infamous Indian vulture populations, which had become a staple throughout the country, started disappearing from the skies, roadsides, and roofs of the country, not many people took notice. Not, that is, until it was, quite possibly, too late.

While doing some research for a report, we came across a delightful book entitled Natural History of the Animal Kingdom for the Use of Young People (1889), by W.F. Kirby. The work is meant to be an introduction to the animal kingdom for adolescents, as the title suggests, and presents the structure of the animal kingdom, and many particulars of the classes within it, alongside some absolutely brilliant illustrations. While the text itself is quaint in the way it presents and describes various aspects of the animal kingdom, it was, as is so often the case, the illustrations that really sucked us in. We believe they represent some of the most colorful and vivid in BHL.

Earlier this week we did a Species of the Day tweet on Twitter (@BioDivLibrary) about the Abyssinian or Ethiopian Wolf – the most endangered canine in the world. For the tweet, we linked to a lovely portrait of the animal in Album of Abyssinian Birds and Mammals (1930), illustrated by Louis Agassiz Fuertes. Little did we know what a fascinating work this actually is.

“If this were true, adios theory”

Such important words for Darwin, and so revealing to us. They offer us insight into the inner workings of this brilliant mind as he nursed to full fruition an idea that started on the now-legendary Galapagos Islands. Studying the works of the leading scientists of his time was critical to Darwin’s development of this idea. By applying, and sometimes countering, the theories of others, he constructed one of our most important scientific foundations – Evolution. He documented this intellectual progression in the margins of the books in his library. And this marginalia, and indeed digital scans of his personal library, are now available for you to peruse at your leisure on BHL in Charles Darwin’s Library!

This week we’re going to do our book of the week a little differently. We came across this awesome tool on the National Geographic website called Backyard Bird Identifier. By answering some simple questions about a bird that you have seen in either the U.S. or Canada, the application tells you the possible species. We thought that was pretty cool, so we decided to see if this tool could identify birds based on answers that we give solely by looking at the illustrations and associated descriptions in one of the books in our collection.