A Natural History of Nevis, and the Rest of the English Leeward Charibee Islands in America : With Many Other Observations on Nature and Art Paperback / softback
by William Smith
Part of the Cambridge Library Collection - North American History series
Paperback / softback
- Information
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.
Information
-
Out of StockMore expected soonContact us for further information
- Format:Paperback / softback
- Pages:338 pages, Worked examples or Exercises
- Publisher:Cambridge University Press
- Publication Date:25/09/2014
- Category:
- ISBN:9781108076999
Information
-
Out of StockMore expected soonContact us for further information
- Format:Paperback / softback
- Pages:338 pages, Worked examples or Exercises
- Publisher:Cambridge University Press
- Publication Date:25/09/2014
- Category:
- ISBN:9781108076999
