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Featured Books
    All Featured Books
    Book of the Month Series
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    Monsters Are Real
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Visit BHL
  • Home
  • News
  • Featured Books
    • All Featured Books
    • Book of the Month Series
  • User Stories
  • Campaigns
    • Fossil Stories
    • Garden Stories
    • Monsters Are Real
    • Page Frights
    • Her Natural History
    • Earth Optimism 2020
  • Tech Blog
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Biodiversity Heritage Library - Program news and collection highlights from BHL

All posts tagged with book-of-the-month

Blog Reel, Featured Books

The Herefordshire Pomona

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It is a glimpse into a lush diversity of the past….and into possibilities for a resilient future. The Herefordshire Pomona is a classic in the science and practice of pomology. Compiled and edited by the eminent 19th century horticulturalist Robert Hogg and the physician Henry Graves Bull, who moonlighted as an enthusiastic amateur naturalist, the Pomona was an outgrowth of efforts by the Woolhope Naturalists’ Field Club to record and showcase the different varieties of apples and pears found in the orchards of Herefordshire, a county in the West Midlands region of England.

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June 7, 2018byEveline V. Ferretti
Blog Reel, Featured Books

Seeds in the Stacks: A Closer Look at Two Seedsmen from the Golden Age

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The National Agricultural Library (NAL), Special Collections has one of the world’s largest collections of nursery and seed trade catalogs totaling over 200,000 from American as well as international companies. This collection, representing businesses located in all states plus over 50 countries, was named after its long-time curator, Henry G. Gilbert. The earliest catalog is from William R. Prince & Company dated 1771. NAL continues to collect modern-day catalogs.

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May 24, 2018bySara Lee and Amy Morgan
Blog Reel, Featured Books

“Abnormal apples” and “proliferous potatoes” – Uncovering the stories behind Kew’s Museum of Economic Botany Collection.

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Economic botany can, in a nutshell (excuse the pun), be described as the use of plants by people. This relationship spans thousands of years and includes both individuals and cultures – making this subject a rich and fascinating link between botany and anthropology. Economic botany collections can essentially be described using the term biocultural.

The Economic Botany Collection at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew holds around 100,000 objects from around the globe. Established as the Museum of Economic Botany by Kew’s first official Director, Sir William Jackson Hooker, in 1847, it was cited as a public repository for ‘all kinds of useful and curious Vegetable Products, which neither the living plants of the Garden nor the specimens in the Herbarium could exhibit’.

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April 26, 2018byJoanna Durant
Blog Reel, Featured Books

Exploring the First American Silva

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The North American Sylva is a beautiful scientifically and historically-significant work. Authored by François-André Michaux, it is the first American silva – a descriptive flora of forest trees. Published originally in French in 1810, the first English version appeared in 1817, and it was further enhanced with supplementary volumes by Thomas Nuttall in the 1840s.

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March 29, 2018byGrace Costantino
Blog Reel, Featured Books

Exploring the Birds of Canada

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Did someone say Spring?!

In Ottawa, we start to see the Canada Geese returning to their summer nesting grounds around this time of year. Large flocks of them fly overhead in the same v-shaped formations we saw months ago when they left in the late fall.​

Aren’t migratory birds fascinating? Along with so many other Canadian bird species.

Birds of Canada by Percy Algernon Taverner remains one of the best accounts of the kinds of birds that occur in Canada. And the first thirty-six pages holds just the right amount of information to open the science of ornithology to bird lovers, yet still enough information to satisfy research needs.​

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March 22, 2018byElizabeth Smith
Blog Reel, Featured Books

When Writing in a 15th Century Rare Book is a Good Thing: Exploring the Incredible Marginalia in the Smithsonian’s Naturalis Historia

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“Do your reading!” and “Don’t write in your books!” are two oft-echoed directions from schoolteachers. A 1491 edition of Pliny the Elder’s Naturalis Historia, housed in the Smithsonian Libraries’ Joseph F. Cullman 3rd Library of Natural History and recently digitized for the Biodiversity Heritage Library, challenges both of those commands: not only did Pliny write it in such a way that doesn’t necessitate reading it cover to cover, but readers in centuries past have added notes, reactions, and even corrections to every page of the book!

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February 22, 2018byAlexandra K. Alvis and Daniel Euphrat
Blog Reel, Featured Books

“If it Lives, We Want It.” Exploring the Acclimatisation Society of Victoria’s Role in Australia’s Ecological History

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The Acclimatisation Society of Victoria played a fascinating, yet devastating, role in Australia’s ecological history. Founded in 1861 and existing as an independent entity until 1872, the Society recorded its objectives and activities in annual reports. These reports have been digitized by Museums Victoria and are now available on the Biodiversity Heritage Library.

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January 25, 2018byNicole Kearney
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The Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL) is the world’s largest open access digital library for biodiversity literature and archives. Headquartered at the Smithsonian Libraries and Archives in Washington, D.C., BHL operates as a worldwide consortium of natural history, botanical, research, and national libraries working together to digitize the natural history literature held in their collections and make it freely available for open access as part of a global “biodiversity community.”

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