zoology

The Fire of Life

Focused on bioenergetics, or how organisms transform energy, this book is frequently used and important to scientists at the National Zoological Park. It also happens to be out-of-print book, and has dramatically increased in value because it is a timeless and important resource in the field of animal nutrition. 

Wild Animals in Captivity

Abraham Dee Bartlett (1812-1897) was a prominent taxidermist and superintendent of the London Zoological Gardens. He was in regular correspondence with Charles Darwin, and served Queen Victoria by taking care of her pet birds. Bartlett left a mixed legacy. He was a well-respected and influential scientist who was a noted expert on the care and keeping of wild animals, ultimately becoming a household name. However, he was also responsible for the sale of Jumbo, the African elephant, to P. T. Barnum, despite widespread protests. Bartlett later died on the zoo grounds.

Papillons d'Europe

Ernst & Engramelle's work on the butterflies of Europe was originally issued by subscription in 29 fascicles over 13 years. The Cullman Library holds the complete work: eight volumes of text (bound as three) with 342 meticulously and beautifully hand-colored plates in three separate volumes (Paris: Delaguette etc., 1779-1792).

Topographical Description of the State of Ohio, Indiana Territory, and Louisiana

This book is of interest primarily for including the journal of Charles Le Raye, a fur trader who was purportedly captured by the Sioux on the upper Missouri River. It included descriptions of the Native American peoples whom he encountered and the animals of the region. The journal is actually a fabrication, drawn from contemporary accounts of the Lewis & Clark and the Pike expeditions, but it is the source for the first descriptions and scientific names of seven species of American mammals, including the mule deer.

Svenska Spindlar

A member of the minor Swedish nobility, Clerck was a friend and correspondent of Linnaeus. He studied spiders, publishing his identifications and analyses in the present work along with observations on their behavior. In Swedish and Latin, it describes and illustrates 70 species and is a classic of arachnology; indeed, it is the founding text on spider nomenclature.

Histoire Naturelle des Lepidoptères Exotiques

Pierre Hippolyte Lucas (1815?-1899) began his career in science at 13 as an apprentice preparator in the zoological laboratory of the Muséum Nationale d'Histoire Naturelle in Paris. He became a respected expert on several orders of invertebrates and wrote up the specimens of several important French expeditions. Held by only 6 libraries in the U.S., the present work is on non-European butterflies, including species from Australia and other areas in the Pacific.

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