New World Nature

Mark Catesby, The Natural History of Carolina, Florida, and the Bahama Islands, 2 vols. (London: Charles Marsh, 1754). Rare Book Collection QH41.C3 1754 FF

One of the world’s first color-plate books about a North American subject, the English naturalist Mark Catesby’s magnificent folio, The Natural History of Carolina, Florida, and the Bahama Islands (first published in two volumes in 1731 and 1743) spurred Carl Linnaeus and other scientists to incorporate more American plants, insects, and animals into their classification schemes.

Encouraged by England’s Royal Society, Catesby made two trips from England to the New World. He spent 1712–1719 largely in Virginia, and 1722–1726 in Carolina and the West Indies. Fish, birds, insects, snakes, trees: Catesby drew them all, collecting as he went and shipping specimens back to England. He tried when possible to draw from life and to show animals with the plants on which they fed: a spray of seedpods, for example, tempts the Cuban parrot. Drawing from intact specimens was not always possible. The hogfish was missing its tail when Catesby found it, so he drew it that way, as a fish bust. In the grand, expansive tradition of “natural history” at this time Catesby also described the customs of the American Indians. The blue wampum snake curling around a red Carolina lily took its name “from the Resemblance it has to Indian Money called Wampum, which is made of Shells cut into regular Pieces, and strung with a Mixture of Blue and White.” The Royal Society’s interest in Catesby’s project was both scientific and commercial, as the cacao plant reveals. Catesby urged the English to grow “this excellent tree” on all their sugar islands so as to steal the lucrative chocolate market from the Spanish.