Long before John James Audubon began to chronicle the wildlife of North America in his paintings, Mark Catesby had already undertaken such a project and as a result produced The Natural History of Carolina, Florida and the Bahama Islands.
Growing up in the Pacific Northwest, the activities of the U.S. Forest Service were not just the doings of some far off bureaucrats in Washington D.C.; they were the stuff of daily conversation around the restaurants and coffee shops of the hundreds of small towns populated by people who drew their existence from the vast tracts of forests that blanket the region.
Not long ago I reported that Frederick Law Olmsted: Plans and Views of Public Parks was soon to be published by Johns Hopkins University Press. However in doing so I neglected also to mention the recent publication by this same publisher of the ninth volume in their definitive series cataloging Olmsted’s papers.
For those who are either already fascinated by them, or those who are simply curious to learn a bit more about some of the world’s most widely and notoriously misunderstood mammals, news of the forthcoming publication of M. Brock Fenton’s and Nancy Simmons’ “Bats; A World of Science and Mystery” by The University of Chicago Press should come as very welcome news indeed.