| A Natural History of Nevis, and the Rest of the English Leeward Charibee Islands in America: With Many Other Observations on Nature and Art Contributor(s): Smith, William (Author) |
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ISBN: 1108076998 ISBN-13: 9781108076999 Publisher: Cambridge University Press OUR PRICE: $46.54 Product Type: Paperback - Other Formats Published: September 2014 |
| Additional Information |
| BISAC Categories: - History | Historical Geography - Nature |
| Dewey: 508 |
| Series: Cambridge Library Collection - North American History |
| Physical Information: 0.76" H x 5.5" W x 8.5" (0.95 lbs) 338 pages |
| Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
| Publisher Description: During his five years in the 1730s as rector of St John's parish on the Caribbean island of Nevis, William Smith collected a number of remarkable seashells, which he presented to the Woodwardian Museum of Fossils at the University of Cambridge nine years after his return to England. When the incumbent Woodwardian Professor, Charles Mason, asked Smith for 'some account' of the Nevis shells, Smith wrote him a series of eleven undated letters, published as this book in 1745, containing observations on the island's flora and fauna, and details relating to the neighbouring islands. Mason and Smith became friends, and the content of the letters gradually diverged from pure recollection to larger digressions on subjects as varied as cryptography, diseases common to slaves, tarantulas, and the Great Wall of China. The result is an idiosyncratic snapshot of the mind of an educated and slightly eccentric cleric in eighteenth-century England. |