“The interior of woods seems, as I have said, the fittest haunts for the Red-shouldered Hawk. He sails through them a few yards above the ground, and suddenly alights on the low branch of a tree, or the top of a dead stump, from which he silently watches, in an erect posture, for the appearance of squirrels, upon which he pounces directly and kills them in an instant, afterwards devouring them on the ground.  If accidentally discovered, he essays to remove the squirrel, but finding this difficult, he drags it partly through the air and partly along the ground, to some short distance, until he conceives himself out of sight of the intruder, when he again commences feeding.  The eating of a whole squirrel, which this bird often devours at one meal, so gorges it, that I have seen it in this state almost unable to fly, and with such an extraordinary protuberance on its breast as seemed very unnatural, and very injurious to the beauty of form which the bird usually displays.”

–J. J. Audubon, Ornithological Biography, I (1831), 297 [excerpted].

“I have named this pretty and rare species after Baron Cuvier, not merely by way of acknowledgement for the kind attentions which I have received at the hands of that deservedly celebrated naturalist, but more as a homage due by every student of nature to one at present unrivalled in the knowledge of General Zoology.

I shot the bird represented in the Plate, on my father-in-law’s plantation of Flatland Ford, on the Skuylkill River in Pennsylvania, on the 8th June, 1812, while on a visit to my honored relative Mr. William Bakewell . . . I have not seen another since, nor have I been able to learn that this species has been observed by any other individual.”

–J. J. Audubon, Ornithological Biography, I (1831), 288 [excerpted].

A public talk and book signing by the author

Wednesday, November 7, 3:00pm

The Watkinson Library

By situating Columbus in the cultural context of his times, my talk discusses the little known reasons behind his voyages. He did not set out to prove the earth was round (most of his contemporaries already knew that), nor did he expect to discover a new world. In a number of extant writings, he clearly stated the ultimate purpose of his voyages: to sail to Asia to obtain gold through trade with the Grand Khan of Cathay in order to finance a crusade to wrest Jerusalem from the Muslims. This was a necessary precondition for Christ’s return before the end of the world. Columbus, like many of his contemporaries, keenly felt that the end was imminent, and he was prepared to play his part in the unfolding apocalyptic drama. Because the religious ideas that motivated Columbus have resurfaced in a very different and more dangerous world, I believe his story can be read as a parable for our times.

Dr. Carol Delaney is Emerita Professor, Cultural and Social Anthropology at Stanford University & an Invited Scholar at the John Carter Brown Library, Brown University.

“[In Louisiana] they pass under the name of Meadow Birds.  In Pennsylvania they are called Reed Birds, in Carolina Rice Buntings, and in the Sate of New York Boblinks.  The latter appellation is given to them as far eastward as they are known to proceed for the purpose of breeding . . .

About the middle of May . . . they have become so plentiful, and have so dispersed all over the country, that it is impossible to see a meadow or a field of corn, which does not contain several pairs of them.  The beauty, or, perhaps more properly, the variety of their plumage, as well as of their song, attracts the attention of the bird-catchers.  Great numbers are captured and exposed for sale in the markets, particularly in those of the city of New York.  They are caught in trap-cages, and feed and sing almost immediately after.  Many are carried to Europe, where the shipper is often disappointed in his profits, as by the time they reach there, the birds havbe changed their colours and seem all females . . .

No sooner have the young left the nest, than they and their parents associate with other families, so that by the end of July large flocks begin to appear . . . Now begin their devastations.  They plunder every field, but are shot in immense numbers”

–J. J. Audubon, Ornithological Biography, I (1831), 283-285 [excerpted].

This unique “grammatical map,” according to its author, which was intended to be posted on a wall, was “designed exclusively for the use of families and for private learners,” and displays all parts of grammar–etymology, articles, nouns, pronouns, adjectives, verbs, syntax, false grammar, specimens of parsing, etc.

Jeremiah Greenleaf (1791-1864) is a little-known but highly admired American cartographer who flourished between 1830 and 1850. In addition to the present item, we have copies of the 1840 and 1843 editions of his most important work, A New Universal Atlas, as well as editions of his Grammar Simplified (1826, 1839, and 1851) and his Self-taught Grammarian (1829).

A fascinating recent acquisition relating both to our ornithology and sporting collections, this manuscript game book records the game birds (and other critters) shot by the gentleman sportsman George Harry Grey, 7th Earl of Stamford, 3rd Earl of Warrington (1827-1883) and his father George Harry Grey, 8th Baron Grey of Groby (1802-1835) over a period of forty years, from 1821 to 1861.  The family owned large estates at Enville in Staffordshire, Bradgate Park in Leicestershire, Dunham Massey in Cheshire and Stalybridge near Manchester.  The pre-printed pages includes columns for “pheasants, partidges, hares, rabbits, woodcocks, snipes, wild ducks, teals, landrails, grouse.”  “Persons out” shooting are recorded throughout.

The season at Glengarry 1834.

790 Grouse. 69 black game. 20 snipes. 16 partridge. 7 red deer. 13 roe deer. 7 hares. 4 golden plover. 2 blue hares. 12 ducks. 2 ptarmigan. 280 trout. 36 pike. 11 salmon. 3 eels.   One trout weighed 18 lb. another 8 lb. …

And finishing up the memorandum this entry:

At Do. 2 days, 5 guns, 1834.  399 pheas., 264 hares. Bradgate Park vermin list, 1834, by 4 keepers.  410 weasels, 224 jays, 164 crows, 133 magpies, 109 cats, 66 hawks, 13 herons, 9 owls (1128).

The last entry made by Baron Grey of Groby was for September, 1835.  The register was not started again until 1844 by his son.

–Sally Dickinson, Associate Curator

A donor with ties to Trinity recently gave us a small archive (ca. 60 pages) of  closely-written letters from Preston Cummings, Master of the whaling ship Panama, to his wife Harriett Tew (they were married 19 September 1839), who died in March 1845.  Court records indicate that Harriett was the sister of Elizabeth Tew, an ancestor of the donor’s father.  Cummings ended up in Hawaii, ran an outfitting business and served as a postmaster and customs official in Kealakeakua; his business apparently failed about the time of the Civil War when whaling was diminishing.

The following news story ran in The Friend (published in Honolulu) in 1845:

American whale ship Panama wrecked.—The Panama, Capt. Preston Cummings, was 31 months out, having taken 950 barrels of oil, nearly all sperm. While lying at anchor, at Hivaoa, or La Dominica, one of the Marquesan Islands; she was driven ashore by the wind and a very heavy sea, about 4 o’clock, on the morning of the l0th of August, 1844. Both anchors dragged and became foul. Masts were cut away almost as soon as she struck. Three of the ship’s company were lost in attempting to land, viz—Daniel McDaniel, Fall River, a boatsteerer, Smith, New York state, seaman, and Jack, a North American Indian. Four days after the vessel was wrecked, 13 of the crew were taken away by a French man of war, several of whom found their way to Tahiti; one by the name of Blake, shipped on board the American whale ship Daniel Webster, and another, by the name of John Hamilton, shipped on board the merchant ship Inez, now in this harbor. According to last accounts only 75 barrels of oil had been saved. Our informant is Hamilton, on board the Inez. The Panama belonged to Fall River, the same port where the Holder Borden was owned.

The known whaling voyages captained by Preston Cummings are:

• March – August, 1838: Brig Taunton, departing from Fall River to the Atlantic, brought back 65 barrels of sperm oil.
• October 1838 – August 1839: Brig Taunton, departing from Fall River to the Atlantic, brought back 120 barrels of sperm oil.
• December 1839 ­ September 1841, Ship Panama, departing from Fall River to the South Atlantic, brought back 450 barrels of sperm oil and 190 barrels of baleen whale oil.
• November 1841 – December 1841, Ship Panama, departing from Fall River to the Indian Ocean (must have been forced home, no yield reported).
• April 1842 ­ 1844, Ship Panama, departing from Fall River to the Indian Ocean, no yield (sunk)

We are currently transcribing the letters, and digital images of them (along with transcriptions) will be available soon through the digital repository.

Recently acquired at auction!

Charles Ogé Barbaroux (1792–1867), the son of Charles Jean-Marie Barbaroux (1767–1794, who was guillotined during the Terror) first published his Mémoires in 1822.  A few years later, Joseph Alexandre Lardier (b. 1796) translated them into English as Adventures of a French Serjeant: during his campaigns in Italy, Spain, Germany, Russia, &c., from 1805 to 1823 (London, 1826), for some reason attributing the memoirs to a Robert Guillemard.

We already had the first French edition of Barbaroux’s memoir (1822).  With the support of the Don Engley Book Fund, we recently purchased this manuscript at auction of over 400 pages, which appears to be a fair copy of Lardier’s translation.

To complete our holdings, we also recently acquired the first London edition of this translation (from a dealer in California).  Even a cursory reading reveals many differences in the text, and we feel that this is a superb senior thesis topic for some enterprising student, or a possible article topic  for a faculty member.

Just acquired from a dealer in London, a partially dis-bound album put together by Ellen Harper Parkes (later Ellen Worseley, aunt of Samuel Butler), ca. 1824–1827, in which she collected artwork from many friends, obviously requested and produced especially for her.  Mary Parkes, Ellen’s cousin, was married in 1823 to William Swainson (she was his first wife, and mother of several of his children, who died before he moved to New Zealand).  Swainson (1809-1833) was the first attorney-general of New Zealand (1841-56), and a progressive (for his time) defender of the Maoris, learning to know them by long expeditions on foot through the bush.

The album includes two paintings of birds in watercolor almost identical to plates from Swainson’s Zoological Illustrations.  One of the birds is described in Swainson’s book as a unique specimen brought from Peru.  Other leaves include drawings and paintings by others in social circles intersecting with Robert Southey’s house in Greta Hall.  Seventeen of them are various art contributions on identical cards (which were obviously distributed for the purpose), including two similar images of Southey’s Greta Hall by Parkes herself, and another (pencil drawing), inscribed “Southey’s Cottage at Keswick” by “C. L.,” who may be Charles Lamb. Other contributions are possibly from the Coleridge family (S. C. for Sara, D. C. for Derwent), Letitia Elizabeth Landon (“L.E.L.”, as she often signed her published work), and perhaps Amelia Heber—wife of Bishop Heber, the great English book collector.

There are sixteen other hand painted or hand drawn items done on the pages of the album itself, including not only the Swainson birds but also watercolor Lapland skiing scenes copied from Arthur de Capelle Brooke’s 1827 account of Lapland, a black-and-white bird, and several striking butterflies.  After Ellen Parkes’ marriage to Samuel Worseley they moved to Clifton, Bristol, which is where this album came into the dealer’s possession, and so to us.