History of Science and Nature materials in Haverford Special Collections (HC)

By John James Audubon. This work is an 1840 edition in seven volumes of Audubon’s work describing and illustrating birds in North America. It includes full color illustrations. The college owns two complete editions and a folio reissue with larger illustrations.

By John James Audubon. This book is a 1851 edition of Audubon’s work describing quadruped animals with full color illustrations. Special Collections also owns an elephant folio first edition.

By John Coakley, who was an English doctor and entomologist. This work is a catalog of techniques for taking and preserving samples while traveling abroad. It also contains some speculations on natural history.

By Charles Christopher Reiche. The first part of this book covers weather phenomena and topics related to farming, while the second discusses the life-cycles of various animals. The last two discourses concern different forms and causes of atheism.

By William Howitt, who was an English Quaker and author. This work is divided into twelve chapters that each focus on a particular month and the changes seen in nature (habits of animals, types of vegetation, observations on the weather, etc.) during that month.

By Priscilla Wakefield, who was an English Quaker who wrote numerous books for children and on women’s rights. This work is a series of letters for children on general botanical topics (parts of the flower, etc.) and also a discussion of the various classes of plants.

By John Knapp, who was an English botanist. This journal records his observations on the plants and birds in the countryside.

By Philip Henry Gosse, who was an English naturalist most famous for his omphalos hypothesis, which tried to reconcile modern geology and Biblical creation. This work contains his observations on the flora and fauna of Jamaica made during his 1844 voyage there. Gosse was a draftsman and this work includes a number of his illustrations.

By Edward Newman, who was an entomologist, who described in this work the birds and insects around the town of Godalming just outside of London.

By John Goodman, who was a naturalist and anatomist. This book, which he wrote at the end of his life, collects his observations of the natural world made during walks near his home in Germantown.

By Jose de Acosta. This is a 1604 English translation of the original 1590 Spanish text by a Jesuit priest who spent many years in the Americas.

By Francis Bacon, it is a "natural history in ten centuries" and describes a variety of natural history experiments.

By William Salmon. Includes information on the medical uses of various plants.

Collection consists almost entirely of autograph letters, signed, mostly addressed to Reuben Haines, 1793­-1834, about one­ third addressed to him personally, the other two ­thirds addressed to him as Corresponding Secretary of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia. The writers of the latter were prominent scientists, scholars, and statesmen from all over the world.

Contains a notebook of original compositions related to to nature, weather, and animals.

The "Travel and Sightseeing Materials" collection contains the journal of Emma F. Wistar, in which she details her 1866 trip to Niagara Falls, including notes on botanical specimens she saw and collected. Some plant and flower specimens are dried between the pages of the journal.