All posts in Featured Books

Today’s book of the week comes to us from an entomologist who also enjoyed a brief stint as a librarian. British beetles transferred from Curtis’s British entomology by Edward Wesley Janson exemplifies intellectual collaboration within the entomological community during the 19th century, when bug-collecting enjoyed heightened popularity among the general public.

With the month of September having drawn to a close, and the cooler weather descending upon us (yes, even here in San Francisco), it seems a fitting time to draw attention to the contributions of Jean-François Galaup, Comte de La Pérouse and his remarkable (and ill-fated) Pacific voyage. Because it was 223 years ago last month that La Pérouse landed his first French expedition to California, a trip that led to the first published account and image of the California Quail, our state bird since 1931.

Timothy Abbott Conrad (1803-1877) enjoyed a remarkable career, and, although he is best known as an American geologist, malacologist, and carcinologist, he began his professional career as a clerk in his father’s printing and publishing house. It was not until 1831, also the year in which Conrad was elected a member of the Academy of Natural Sciences, that he published his first volume, American Marine Conchology, or Descriptions and Colored Figures of the Shells of the Atlantic Coast (several plates from which are pictured here). Intending with this volume to “supply a deficiency which [had] long been felt by the cultivators of American natural history,” this volume contains seventeen plates, all illustrated by Conrad and hand colored by his sister, that depict the abundance and variation of the shells found along America’s coastline.

Can you return from a trip to the beach without something in your pocket? Whether gathering food, collecting shells, or simply plucking a pretty rock from the surf while strolling on the sand, beachcombing seems like a universal practice, and one at least as old as bipedalism (and pockets).

The dream of making biodiversity information freely available to people around the world is an ambitious goal embraced by many in the scientific community, and it represents the mission behind both the Biodiversity Heritage Library and the Encyclopedia of Life (www.eol.com), of which BHL is a cornerstone institution.

Pierre Belon was one of the first great explorer-naturalists, blazing a trail that would be followed by such luminaries as Damphier, Catesby, Humbolt, and Darwin. He is one of the foremost figures in the world of comparative anatomy, issuing some of the earliest works on homology. His Histoire Naturelle des Estranges Poissons Marins, published in 1551, is the first printed work devoted to fish (although it must be noted that Belon included such aquatic non-fish as the dolphin and hippopotamus). The work is notable for its beautiful woodcut illustrations and Belon’s accurate anatomical descriptions, many of which were based on his own dissections. His description and image of a cetacean fetus in utero is considered the first example of the science of embryology.