The Golden State Scientist

Despite dying at only 28, Edward M. Haight (1863-1891) established a busy career as an enthusiastic naturalist, collector, taxidermist, and publisher. The Golden State Scientist is one of three serials that he edited in the late 1880s, and it is by far the scarcest. This was the only issue ever published, and only 450 copies made it into print, owing to “the many blunders made in the advertisements." Only about a dozen copies survive in libraries today. The subjects discussed in the journal range from the breeding habits of the platypus, to the history of Chinese money, to the perils of fraud in stamp-collecting. Perhaps the most interesting article concerns the worth (or lack thereof) of diamonds found by California miners who managed to survive the boom and bust of the gold rush.