The Natural History & Science Collection contains a significant number of volumes dealing with the physical and natural world and man’s engagement with it.

Albertus Seba. Locupletissimi rerum naturalium thesauri accurata desciptio, et iconibus artificiossimis expressio…

Amstelaedam [Amsterdam]: apud J. Westenium & Gul. Smith: Janssonio-Waesbergios, 1734-65. 4 Vols. Presented by Edward D. Pearce. Known as the Thesaurus or the Cabinet of Natural Curiosities, Albertus Seba’s work remains one of the most prized natural history books of all time. The four volumes include 449 hand-colored, engraved plates, 175 of them double-paged, and a color frontispiece portrait of Seba (Volume 1) engraved by Jac. Houbraken from a painting by J.M. Quinkhard. The volumes are bound in red Morocco leather with gilt decorations.

Pieter Cramer. De uitlandsche kapellen voorkomende in de drie waerld-deelen Asia, Africa en Amerique…

Amsterdam: Chez S.J. Baalde; Utrecht: Chez Barthelemy Wild, 1779-1782. 8 Vols. The title of this eighteenth-century work translates as Exotic Butterflies from Three Parts of the World, Asia, Africa, and America. In 400 engraved and hand-colored plates, the work details over 1,650 species of butterflies, moths, and other insects in non-European countries.

John Fisk Allen. Victoria regia; or The Great Water Lily of America...

With a brief account of its discovery and introduction into cultivation with illustrations by William Sharp from specimens grown at Salem, Massachusetts. Boston: Printed and published for the author, by Dutton & Wentworth, 1854. This volume contains six hand-colored chromolithographs of water lilies cultivated in Salem, Massachusetts. The work is a fine example of American botanical illustration.

Elijah H. Burritt. The Geography of the Heavens, and classbook of astronomy, accompanied by a celestial atlas.

New York: Huntington & Co., 1839.

Thomas L. McKenney & James Hall. History of the Indian Tribes of North America…

With biographical sketches and anecdotes of the principal chiefs. Embellished with one hundred and twenty portraits, from the Indian gallery in the Department of war, at Washington. Philadelphia: E.C. Biddle, 1838-42. Vol. 1-2. 1st edition. The Athenæum acquired Volumes 1-2 of the three volume folio set when it was published in 1838-42. The hand-colored lithographic plates of Native Americans were reproduced from portraits commissioned during land negotiations by the War Department, at the insistence of Thomas McKenney, Superintendent of Indian Trade. Approximately two thirds of the original oil paintings were produced by Newport artist Charles Bird King over a twenty year period. Most of the canvases were later destroyed by a fire at the Indian Gallery in Washington in 1865.

John James Audubon & John Bachman. The viviparous quadrupeds of North America, by John James Audubon and John Bachman.

New York: Published by J.J. Audubon, 1846-53. 3 vols. Illustrated with hand-colored lithographs. With the publication of The Birds of America earning John James Audubon worldwide fame, he became interested in his next large-scale project. In the early 1840s he began working on “The Viviparous Quadrupeds of North America” with the help of his sons John Woodhouse Audubon and Victor Gifford. The former painted many of the animal portraits while the later painted many of the landscape backgrounds. They would produce 150 folio drawings, measuring approximately 22x28 inches, hand-printed and hand colored by J.T. Bowen of Philadelphia. Audubon himself was responsible for about one half of the drawings in the three volumes.

Mushrooms of America: Edible and Poisonous.

Edited by Julius A. Palmer. Boston: L. Prang & Co., 1885. Illustrated with 12 chromolithographic plates.

Among the holdings are handsomely illustrated botanical books, myriad naturalists’ biographies and autobiographies, musings on gardening and landscaping, treatises on geological formations, observations of nature during travel, and numerous works devoted to the flora and fauna of specific areas around the world, including Rhode Island. The highlight of this collection is Albertus Seba’s Cabinet of Curiosities (1734-1765), documenting the natural history specimen collection of the famed eighteenth-century apothecary from Amsterdam.

For more information, view The Natural History Collection of the Providence Athenæum: A Selected Annotated Bibliography (Providence, RI: Providence Athenæum, 1997).