eBotanical Prints – October 2018

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30 eBotanical Print books in October! I continue to be surprised at how many botanical print books there are in the Internet Archive. Most of them are from the 1800s. The quality of the original works and then the quality of the scans being made of the books makes viewing botanical on prints online on a larger monitor well worth the effort. In subsequent days – I’ll highlight 3 books/collections from October. For day - enjoy the October Botanical print slide carousel. Check out some of the eBooks using the links below the pictures.

Flore des serres et des jardins de l'Europe V2 (1846) * van Houtte, Louis * sample image * 1846

Flore des serres et des jardins de l'Europe V3 (1847) * van Houtte, Louis * sample image * 1847

Flore des serres et des jardins de l'Europe V4 (1848) * van Houtte, Louis * sample image * 1848

Flore des serres et des jardins de l'Europe V5 (1849) * van Houtte, Louis * sample image * 1849

Flore des serres et des jardins de l'Europe V6 (1850) * van Houtte, Louis * sample image * 1850

Flore des serres et des jardins de l'Europe V7 (1852) * van Houtte, Louis * sample image * 1852

Flore des serres et des jardins de l'Europe V8 (1853) * van Houtte, Louis * sample image * 1853

Flore des serres et des jardins de l'Europe V9 (1854) * van Houtte, Louis * sample image * 1854

Flore des serres et des jardins de l'Europe V10(1855) * van Houtte, Louis * sample image * 1855

Flore des serres et des jardins de l'Europe V11(1856) * van Houtte, Louis * sample image * 1856

Flore des serres et des jardins de l'Europe V12 (1857) * van Houtte, Louis * sample image * 1857

Flore des serres et des jardins de l'Europe V13 (1858) * van Houtte, Louis * sample image * 1858

Flore des serres et des jardins de l'Europe V14 (1861) * van Houtte, Louis * sample image * 1861

Flore des serres et des jardins de l'Europe V15 (1862-1865) * van Houtte, Louis * sample image * 1865

Flore des serres et des jardins de l'Europe V16 (1865-1867) * van Houtte, Louis * sample image * 1867

Flore des serres et des jardins de l'Europe V17 (1868) * van Houtte, Louis * sample image * 1868

Flore des serres et des jardins de l'Europe V18 (1869 - 1870) * van Houtte, Louis * sample image * 1870

Flore des serres et des jardins de l'Europe V19 (1873) * van Houtte, Louis * sample image * 1873

Flore des serres et des jardins de l'Europe V20 (1874) * van Houtte, Louis * sample image * 1874

Flore des serres et des jardins de l'Europe V21 (1875) * van Houtte, Louis * sample image * 1874

Flore des serres et des jardins de l'Europe V22 (1877) * van Houtte, Louis * sample image * 1877

Flore des serres et des jardins de l'Europe V23 (1880) * van Houtte, Louis * sample image * 1880

Indigenous flowers of the Hawaiian islands  * Sinclair, Francis, Mrs. (Isabella McHutcheson) * sample image * 1885

Sertum Anglicum, seu, Plantae rariores quae in hortis juxta Londinum * L'Héritier de Brutelle, Charles Louis * sample image * 1788

The genus Masdevallia * Woolward, Florence * sample image * 1896

Die Orchideen * Schlechter, Rudolf * sample image * 1915

Die Alpenpflanzen nach der Natur gemalt V1 * Seboth, Joseph; Graf, Ferdinand; Petrasch, Joh * sample image * 1879

Die Alpenpflanzen nach der Natur gemalt V2 * Seboth, Joseph; Graf, Ferdinand; Petrasch, Joh * sample image * 1880

Die Alpenpflanzen nach der Natur gemalt V3 * Seboth, Joseph; Graf, Ferdinand; Petrasch, Joh * sample image * 1881

Die Alpenpflanzen nach der Natur gemalt V4 * Seboth, Joseph; Graf, Ferdinand; Petrasch, Joh * sample image * 1884

3 Free eBooks – October 2018

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There are so many good eBooks available free of charge. All three are from the Internet Archive this month.

Paglia, Camille. Glittering Images – A Journey through Art from Egypt to Star Wars. New York: Pantheon Books. 2012. Available from Internet Archive here. It’s a good book to browse through online – like a digital ‘coffee table’ book – reading only the captions.

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Brock, Alan St. Hill. Pyrotechnics: the history and art of firework making. London: Daniel O’Connor. 1922. Available from Internet Archive here. The depiction of fireworks is quite different between the Chinese and Western Europe/America.

The author was from the 8th generation of the Brock family to made fireworks in England.

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The Diani Beach Art Gallery. Affordable Art Selection September October 2018. Kenya: Diani Beach Contemporary African Art. Available from Internet Archive here. Sometimes catalogs can be worth looking at as a book. I enjoyed the vibrant colors and depictions of African people/scenes.

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eBotanical Prints – September 2018

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It was a light month for botanical books because I was busy with some volumes of insect prints.

October is set up to be a big month for botanical print books because of the many volumes of Louis van Houtte words that are available on Internet Archive. I found the first volume toward the end of September and am savoring them all through October. There are at least 20 volumes!

Enjoy the September Botanical print slide carousel. Check out some of the eBooks using the links below the pictures.

Sturm's Figures of plants V2 * Sturm, Jakob and Johann * sample image * 1798

Sturm's Figures of plants V3 * Sturm, Jakob and Johann * sample image * 1798

Sturm's Figures of plants V4 * Sturm, Jakob and Johann * sample image * 1798

Sturm's Figures of plants V5 * Sturm, Jakob and Johann * sample image * 1798

Deutschlands flora in Abbildungen nach der Natur mit Beschreibungen Abt. 1 Bd. 7-8 * Strum, Jakob * sample image * 1809

Australian Orchids V2 Pt 3 * Fitgerald, Robert David * sample image * 1882

Australian Orchids V2 Pt 4 * Fitgerald, Robert David * sample image * 1882

Australian Orchids V2 Pt 5 * Fitgerald, Robert David * sample image * 1882

Australian Orchids V2 Pt 7 * Fitgerald, Robert David * sample image * 1882

Cryptogames vasculaires V1 * Fee, Antoine Apollinaire * sample image * 1873

Cryptogames vasculaires V2 * Fee, Antoine Apollinaire * sample image * 1873

Flore des serres et des jardins de l'Europe V1 (1845) * van Houtte, Louis * sample image * 1845

 

Here is a list of all 1400+ books containing botanical books that I’ve found online – freely available. Enjoy!

3 Free eBooks – September 2018

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All three of the selections this month are multiple items. The first is a series of books from the late 1700s about insects; the second and third are magazines that are within the past few years.

Panzer, Georg Wolfgasng Franz; Sturm, Jakob. Favnae insectorvm Germanicae initia, oder, Deutschlands Insecten. Nürnberg:In den Felseckerschen Buchhandlung. 1796. A series of books available from Internet Archive here. They are in German but the plates (my Jakob Sturm) are the draw. Lots and lots of insects!

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Morfield, Angie Daly (editor). Missouri Conservationist. Missouri Department of Conservation.  Available from the department website here. The monthly magazine about conservation in the state. If you are a resident of Missouri a subscription to the printed magazine is free! I am looking at it online at this point…learning about the plants and animals of Missouri prior to my daughter moving there. Lots of great pictures of various parts of the state.

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Carey, Victoria (editor). Country Style: Australia Coast to Coast. Several issues of the magazine (2015 and 2016 vintage) are available from Internet Archive here. I liked the photographs of gardens and houses….and animals. They have a large ad for Fancy Feast cat food in every issue!

eBotanical Prints – August 2018

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I perused 22 botanical books in August. They just seem to add up over the course of each month; I keep expecting to come to a time when I am not finding news ones – but it clearly hasn’t happened yet.

There was a lot of variety in the types of books in August.

Some more art-like…others showing flowers and seeds and leaves

Color and pen/ink and photographs

Publication dates from 1645 to 1943

Some of the books had so many beautiful images, I had a hard time picking the one sample image to feature.

Enjoy the August Botanical print slide carousel. Check out some of the eBooks using the links below the pictures.

Groups of flowers : drawn and accurately coloured after nature * Brookshaw, George * sample image * 1817

A new treatise on flower painting, or, Every lady her own drawing master * Brookshaw, George * sample image * 1818

Groups of fruit : accurately drawn and coloured after nature, with full directions for the young artist * Brookshaw, George * sample image * 1817

Ferns of Kentucky * Williamson, John * sample image * 1878

Beautiful Ferns * Eaton, Daneil Cady * sample image * 1886

Icones plantarum rariorum * Schwegman, Henricus; Schneevoogt, G. Vorhelm * sample image * 1793

Recueil de planches de botanique de l'encyclopedie. V1 * Audebert, J. B. et al * sample image * 1923

Recueil de planches de botanique de l'encyclopedie. V2 * Audebert, J. B. et al * sample image * 1923

Recueil de planches de botanique de l'encyclopedie. V3 * Audebert, J. B. et al * sample image * 1923

Recueil de planches de botanique de l'encyclopedie. V4 * Audebert, J. B. et al * sample image * 1923

Histoire des végétaux fossiles, ou, Recherches botaniques et géologiques sur les végétaux renfermés dans les diverses couches du globe * Brongniart, Adolphe et al * sample image * 1828

Wildflowers of Nova Scotia * Miller, Maria; Smith, Titus; Forrester, Alexander * sample image * 1840

Flore universelle * Letellier, Jean-Baptiste * sample image * 1848

Livre nouveau de fleurs tres-util pour l'art d'orfevrerie, et autres * Cochin, Nicolas * sample image * 1645

Das Blumenbuch * Koch, Rudolf, Kredel * sample image * 1930

Garden Flowers in Color * Foley, Daniel J. * sample image * 1943

The botanist's repository, for new and rare plants V 10 * Andrews, Henry Charles  * sample image * 1797

Neue Bilderfolge 1920 * Foerster, Karl * sample image * 1920

Katalog 1916 * Foerster, Karl * sample image * 1916

Katalog 1915 * Foerster, Karl * sample image * 1915

Delectus florae et faunae Brasiliensis * Mikan, Johann Christian; Knapp, Johann et al * sample image * 1820

Sturm's Figures of plants V1 * Sturm, Jakob and Johann * sample image * 1798

3 Free eBooks – August 2018

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So many great books available all the time…and free. Reading used to be a much more expensive activity!

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Brongniart, Adolphe. Histoire des végétaux fossiles, ou, Recherches botaniques et géologiques sur les végétaux renfermés dans les diverses couches du globe. A Paris et a Amsterdam: Chez G. Dufour et Ed. d’Ocagne. 1828. Available from Internet Archive here. This book includes many illustrations of plant fossils – imprints on rocks. It’s written in French – but the illustrations are the reason it’s worth a look. It was probably one of the first paleobotany books ever written. The author produced the book in his late 20s…must have had access to a sizable collection.

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Karageorghis, Vassos. Ancient Art from Cyprus - The Cesnola Collection in The Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc. 2000. Available from Internet Archive here. This is a more recent book (I am glad that many copyright holders that have out-of-print books are making them available this way). The color illustrations are wonderful. I particularly like utilitarian objects.

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Aruz, Joan and Wallenfels, Ronald (editors). Art of the first cities: the third millennium B.C. from the Mediterranean to the Indus. New Haven and London: Yale University Press. 2003. Available from Internet Archive here. Another relatively recent book. Would you have guessed the necklace was from the 3rd millennium BC?

eBotanical Prints – July 2018

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Every time I think I have found most of the botanical print books in my favorite free eBook sites (like Internet Archive and HathiTrust Digital Library), I find some more. In July there were 20 new finds! I pick one image from each book – which often is a challenge. There are so many beautiful images to choose from. Sometimes I pick a familiar plant – like a jack-in-the pulpit or tulip poplar or cardinal flower. This month I couldn’t resist picking the watermelon since I was looking at the book about the time our Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) was including watermelon in our weekly share.

Enjoy the July Botanical print slide show. After the show is a list of the books with links to their locations and a sample image from each (which also was seen in the slide show).

A select collection of one hundred plates: consisting of the most beautiful, exotic and British flowers which blow in our English gardens * Edwards, John * sample image * 1775

The art of drawing and colouring from nature flowers, fruit, and shells: to which is added, correct directions for preparing the most brilliant colours for painting on velvet, with the mode of using them: also the new method of oriental tinting * Whittock, Nathaniel * sample image * 1829

Le Jardin fleuriste : journal général des progrés et des intérets horticoles et botaniques V1 * Lemaire, Charles Antoine * sample image * 1851

Le Jardin fleuriste : journal général des progrés et des intérets horticoles et botaniques V2 * Lemaire, Charles Antoine * sample image * 1852

Le Jardin fleuriste : journal général des progrés et des intérets horticoles et botaniques V3 * Lemaire, Charles Antoine * sample image * 1853

Le Jardin fleuriste : journal général des progrés et des intérets horticoles et botaniques V4 * Lemaire, Charles Antoine * sample image * 1854

Les cactées : histoire, patrie, organes de végétation, inflorescence, culture, etc * Lemaire, Charles Antoine * sample image * 1868

The ladies' flower-garden of ornamental greenhouse plants * Loudon, Jane Webb * sample image * 1848

The Floral Offering * Dumont, Henrietta * sample image * 1853

Wild Flowers * House, Homer Doliver * sample image * 1934

Floral belles from the green-house and garden * Badger, CM, Mrs. * sample image * 1867

Wild flowers drawn from nature * Badger, CM, Mrs. * sample image * 1859

Flore pittoresque et mdicale des Antilles, ou, Histoire naturelle des plantes usuelles des colonies franaises, anglaises, espagnoles et portugaises V1 * Descourtilz, Michel Etienne * sample image * 1821

Flore pittoresque et mdicale des Antilles, ou, Histoire naturelle des plantes usuelles des colonies franaises, anglaises, espagnoles et portugaises V2 * Descourtilz, Michel Etienne * sample image * 1822

Flore pittoresque et mdicale des Antilles, ou, Histoire naturelle des plantes usuelles des colonies franaises, anglaises, espagnoles et portugaises V3 * Descourtilz, Michel Etienne * sample image * 1821

Flore pittoresque et mdicale des Antilles, ou, Histoire naturelle des plantes usuelles des colonies franaises, anglaises, espagnoles et portugaises V4 * Descourtilz, Michel Etienne * sample image * 1827

Flore pittoresque et mdicale des Antilles, ou, Histoire naturelle des plantes usuelles des colonies franaises, anglaises, espagnoles et portugaises V5 * Descourtilz, Michel Etienne * sample image * 1827

Flore pittoresque et mdicale des Antilles, ou, Histoire naturelle des plantes usuelles des colonies franaises, anglaises, espagnoles et portugaises V6 * Descourtilz, Michel Etienne * sample image * 1828

Flore pittoresque et mdicale des Antilles, ou, Histoire naturelle des plantes usuelles des colonies franaises, anglaises, espagnoles et portugaises V7 * Descourtilz, Michel Etienne * sample image * 1829

Flore pittoresque et mdicale des Antilles, ou, Histoire naturelle des plantes usuelles des colonies franaises, anglaises, espagnoles et portugaises V8 * Descourtilz, Michel Etienne * sample image * 1829

4 Free eBooks – July 2018

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Last month I have 4 eBooks to highlight and the same is true for this months – so I gave up and changed the title from 3 to 4. I had a lot of books to choose from…went for a bit of variety.

Yōfu gajō (v. 1). Kyōto-shi: Yamada Unsōdō. Published originally in the Meiji period, 1868-1912. Available from Smithsonian Libraries here.  I liked the scenery in this volume – muted colors except for the red that pops. In the image below – do you think it is a Japanese maple? This was one of the last books in the collection of Japanese books available from this site; if you want to take a look at the whole collection – do so from the Japanese Illustrated Books from the Edo And Meiji Period page.

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Andō, Hiroshige. Tokaido gojusantsugi. Published originally in the Edo Period, 1600-1868. Available from Smithsonian Libraries here. I couldn’t resist two images from this book – rain and snow. I think the snow is my favorite because of the pink….maybe sunrise?

Catlow, Agnes. Drops of water : their marvelous and beautiful inhabitants displayed by the microscope. London: Reeve and Benham. 1851. Available from Internet Archive here. The book was published just before or early in the Victorian surge in microscopy and became one of her most successful books. She was also one of the early science writers that wrote science books for young students.

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The Craftsman. New York: United Crafts. A magazine founded and edited by the American furniture designer Gustav Stickley and published from October 1901 to December 1916. All issues are available from the University of Wisconsin Library’s Digital Library for the Decorative Arts and Material Culture here. I am working my way through the issues a year at a time. I’m up to 1907 as of yesterday.

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There are lots of ideas that would work in modern situations….like hanging curtains far enough away from a window to allow chairs to be in front of the windows without having any curtains at all in the way of the light. I can imagine sitting in the chairs on a sunny winter day with sun streaming in…closing the curtains so that the area gets cozy warm…reading or writing on my laptop or creating a Zentangle.

3 Free eBooks – June 2018

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I picked 4 books instead of 3 in June because of the first two were about the same place – New York – and I thought they were interesting history.

Wittemann, Adolph. Select New York. New York: A. Wittemann. 1889. Available from Internet Archive here. This book includes photographs of New York and almost all of them include a tangle of electrical wires…at the beginning of the electrification of the city when there was a lot of chaos and little standardization.

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Wittmann, Adolph. New York: An Album of Photographs. Brooklyn: Wittemann. 1900. Available from Internet Archive here. The photographs have been tinted and there are no wires at all. Were the electrical conduits underground by 1900 or did the publisher manage to take them out of the photographs?

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Lear, Edward. Illustrations of the family of Psittacidae, or parrots: the greater part of them species hitherto unfigured, containing forty-two lithographic plates, drawn from life, and on stone. London, England: E. Lear. 1832. Available from the Digital Library for the Decorative Arts and Material Culture here. I was surprised to find this book of parrot illustrations…but the same man that wrote the poem ‘The Owl and the Pussycat’ I remember from my childhood!

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Wantanabe, Seitei. Seitei kachō gafu v. 2. Okura Mogabe, Toyko, Meije 23. 1890. Available from Smithsonian Libraries here. I enjoyed the Japanese artwork…like the type of nature photography I like to do. I wanted to be in the place seeing a bird walking in a wetland – perhaps it was early morning.

eBotanical Prints – May 2018

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I am allowing myself one botanical print post in the main blog of this site each month. This is it for May – the books that contained botanical images that I read during the month. I’ll post about individual books in the eBotanicalPrints part of the site: Botanical blog. Also take a look at the Botanical eBooks list to find links to over 1,400 eBooks available free from various sources.

I read 24 botanical eBooks in May. It is always a little surprising that there are so many that I haven’t found before. In May I discovered some recent garden magazines that were made available via Internet Archive. They have great photography of cultivated plants and carry on the tradition of spreading the news about new varieties and planting designs as the books in the 1800s popularized plants from around the world.

The links to the books are below the sample image slide show.

Amaryllidaceae * Herbert, William * sample image * 1837

Les champignons de la France  * Cordier, Francois Simon * sample image * 1870

Flora Parisiensis Volume 5 * Bulliard, Pierre * sample image * 1893

Die Gartenwelt, Vol 5, 1901  * Schmidt, G. (publisher) * sample image * 1901

Historia plantarum rariorum * Martyn, John * sample image * 1728

How to know the wild fruits * Peterson, Maude Gridley * sample image * 1905

Washington watchable wildflowers : a Columbia Basin guide * Camp, Pamela et al * sample image * 1997

Wild flowers of Nova Scotia * Smith, Titus; Miller, Maria * sample image * 1840

Flea Market Gardens 2015 * misc * sample image * 2015

Fine Gardening Jun 2016 * Aitken, Steve (editor) * sample image * 2016

Country Gardens Summer 2016 * Baggett, James Augustus (editor) * sample image * 2016

Country Gardens Fall 2016 * Baggett, James Augustus (editor) * sample image * 2016

Perennial Garden Ideas 2015 USA * Jimerson, Doug; Weir-Jimerson, Karen * sample image * 2015

The vegetable world : being a history of plants  * Figuier, Louis * sample image * 1869

British flowering plants V1 * Boulger, George Simonds; Mrs. Henry Perrin (illustrator) * sample image * 1914

Country Gardens Spring 2016 * Baggett, James Augustus (editor) * sample image * 2016

British flowering plants V2 * Boulger, George Simonds; Mrs. Henry Perrin (illustrator) * sample image * 1914

American country homes and their gardens * Baker, John Cordis * sample image * 1906

British flowering plants V3 * Boulger, George Simonds; Mrs. Henry Perrin (illustrator) * sample image * 1914

British flowering plants V4 * Boulger, George Simonds; Mrs. Henry Perrin (illustrator) * sample image * 1914

The Nature Library - Trees * Rogers, Julia Ellen * sample image * 1926

The New Flora Britannica - Vol 1 * Edwards, Sydenham; Sansom, Francis * sample image * 1812

The New Flora Britannica - Vol 2 * Edwards, Sydenham; Sansom, Francis * sample image * 1812

Fine Gardening May 2017 * Aitken, Steve (editor) * sample image * 2017

14 eBooks about Niagara Falls

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In May, I found lots of books about Niagara Falls on Internet Archive and I’m featuring 14 of them in this post. They are free – easily viewed online with the lines I’ve provided. The books are from a Canadian collection of books (Brock University) and range from 1843 to 1922. There were three from the 1840s – showing that it was a tourist destination early on. (1843, 1845, 1846)

There were already boats going to the base of the fall by the 1850s. (1852)

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A book from 1860 provided a panoramic view of the Niagara River (with the falls at the top).

There were trains to be place by the 1880s (1884, 1888)

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And there were visitors even in the winter by then too. (1884)

That continued into the 1890s. (1997, 1998)

In the first decade of the 1900s the boats were still popular….but there was a cable car too. (1900, 1901, 1910)

The last page of a book copyrighted in 1922 included an annotated map of the falls area that had been created in 1893.

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eBotanical Prints – April 2018

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I am allowing myself one botanical print post in the main blog of this site each month. This is it for April – the books that contained botanical images that I read during the month. I’ll post about individual books in the eBotanicalPrints part of the site: Botanical blog. Also take a look at the botanical eBooks list to find links to over 1,000 eBooks available free from various sources.

I read 16 botanical eBooks in April and 15 sample images are shown below. The 16th book (about seed pods) is one that is still under copyright but is available for checkout from Internet Archive. The links to the books are below the sample images.

Free eBooks – April 2018

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It is so easy to find historical books that are available online – scanned with care and ‘free.’ I can remember a time when I went to libraries (often not finding the book I was looking for) and how expensive it could be to buy books. Now I find myself rarely spending money on books. There are such riches of books these day. The world of books has changed in my lifetime almost as monumentally as the advent of the printing press! Here are three picks from the books I found this month.

Ogata, Kori; Aikawa,Minwa. Korin gashiki. Kikuya Kihē, Kyōto, Bunka 15. 1818. Available from Smithsonian Libraries here. In the image I chose to clip from the book – I like the simplicity of the drawing of the cranes (and chicks). I also like the way water is drawn; it is easily used as a Zentangle pattern.

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Mars, Gerhardt C. (editor). Brickwork of Italy: a brief review from ancient to modern times. Chicago: American Face Brick Association. 1925. Available from Internet Archive here. Somehow the mellow color of brick and the architecture in the illustrations in this book were very appealing.

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Merian, Maria Sibylla. Metamorphosis insectorum surinamensium. Amsterdam: 1705. Available on Internet Archive here. An early book about butterflies…and their caterpillars. Merian was a leading entomologist in the early 1700s…and was one of the first to publish color images of insects…particularly documenting metamorphosis of butterflies.

eBotanical Prints – March 2018

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I added the 2009 books to the list on the eBotanicalPrints area of the site and that completes the gleanings from previous years. Take a look at the Botanical Blog.  I’ll keep adding books I browse each month to the list because there still seem to be lots of botanical print books out there being scanned and made available online.

I’ve also formulated a table for the list of books which makes it easier to sort the list….and I’ve added the copyright date.

I only have 12 books to add to the list from March. The sample images are shown first…then the list with links to the ebooks. Enjoy!

3 Free eBooks – March 2018

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So many books…so little time. I’m still working my way through the Japanese Illustrated Books from the Edo and Meiji Period. My favorite this month was a series with three volumes:

Kacho shasin zui. Published by Nishimura Soshichi, 1805. Available from Smithsonian Libraries here. I like the images of the birds and flowers as art and snapshots of nature through the lens of Japanese culture of the time. The scans appear a little smudged but that adds to their charm – there were books that were enjoyed again and again!

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The other books I’m highlighting this month were both written about the same time – the 1920s – and about scenic highways along rivers. The first one is from the west coast…the second is from the east coast. Both highways still exist…although is renovated/modified form. These books were probably produced as souvenirs with annotated pictures.

Oregon’s famous Columbia River Highway. Published by Lipschuetz and Katz, Portland Oregon. 1920. Available from Internet Archive here. Scenic routes have been popular since the beginning of the age of automobiles! Even with the lower speeds of those early cars, there were still turnouts – places to stop to see the river or walk a little way to see waterfalls.

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Storm King Highway and the Historic Hudson River. Published by J. Ruben, Newburgh, New York. Available from Internet Archive here. A lot has happened along the Hudson River in the last century and not all for the better. I found the highway on Google Maps and the first ‘street view’ was one with graffiti (not the artistic kind) all over the rock wall and rocks beyond. I didn’t look further. It’s depressing to see something that was once scenic turned into a prime example of ‘tragedy of the commons.’

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3 Free eBooks – February 2018

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I’m saving the wonderful botanical print books I viewed in February for a post on botanical prints…so the three books featured today are from the rest of my online reading in February.

Mochizuki, Gyokusen. Gyokusen shūgajō. Tonaka Jihe, Kyoto-shi, Meiji 24. 1891. Available from the Smithsonian Libraries site here.  I liked the soft colors and the depictions of familiar things. The dragonfly on grassy stems was my favorite.

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Mori, Yuzan. Hamonshu. Yamada Geisodo, Kyoto-shi, Meiji 36. 1903. Three volumes are available from the Smithsonian Libraries site here. These books are all about depicting water. I got a lot of ideas for Zentangle patterns from these volumes

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.Ladies Realm – an illustrated monthly magazine. Published by Hutchinson and Co. London. The volumes from the late 1800s to 1913 are available on Hathi Trust here.  This period was one of transition. There was a lot of change in fashion and technology and what women were reading. At first there were a lot of pictures of the royal family and other aristocrats….and lots of pages devoted to fashion from Paris. As time when on, there was more fiction, more ‘how to’ articles, and by the 25th volume (1908-1909) an article showing pictures of London at night.

HoLLIE – week 3

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The Week 3 of  HoLLIE (Howard County Legacy Leadership for the Environment) class day was last week and it was held at NASA Goddard like the second week. The theme for the day was continued from last week: “what informed citizens need to know about earth systems science.”

The first talk of the day as about ice sheets and included a discussion of the speakers trek to the South Pole last year. Check out her ICESat-2 Antarctic Traverse Blog (The first post is from December 4, 2017. If you want to start with that one and read in chronological order, scroll down to the bottom of this page until you get to ‘Heading South, to New Zealand and Beyond.’ Then after reading the ‘South Pole Station: The Last Stop Before the Traverse’ beginning at the top of the page, click on ‘newer entries’ to read the rest of the of the posts – and again start with the post at the bottom of the page and work up). She spent Christmas at the South Pole!

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She recommended a book that I found could be checked out from Internet Archive when I got home: The two-mile time machine by Richard B. Alley. The book is about the annual rings of ice from cores drilled in Greenland and what they tell us about Earth’s climate over time.

The second talk was about the Land-Based Hydrology Cycle. This talk included what we can learn from satellites but also what measurements are taken on land too (and how much effort that takes…to get even sporadic data). With fresh water being so key to life – the very highs (floods) and very lows (droughts) are major impact all around the world.

The third talk was about the Black Marble project…about what we can learn from looking at the earth at night. Back in April there was good summation of the project – to create the images more frequently so that they could be used more even more applications (like short-term weather forecasting and disaster response): New Night Lights Maps Open Up Possible Real-Time Applications - https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2017/new-night-lights-maps-open-up-possible-real-time-applications; take a look at the map of India midway through the article and slide the vertical bar to the see how the northern part of the country was electrified between 2012 and 2016. There is more at https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/NightLights/.

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The fourth talk was about how the Montreal Protocol saved the earth’s ozone layer. I knew the protocol concerned Ozone and CFCs….but didn’t realize any more history than that. The timing of a report that linked CFCs to ozone depletion just before the ‘hole’ was discovered in the ozone layer (a major change from measures of ozone for many years beforehand) over Antarctica made for a dramatic beginning to the conversation. It has been effective because governments engaged industry that provided substitutes (some transitional) that made it possible to move away from compounds that were ozone damaging in the stratosphere.

Next we visited NASA’s Scientific Visualization Studio – seeing some of their recent work on a wall sized screen. Here are some web versions of what we saw in the studio:

NASA's Near-Earth Science Mission Fleet: March 2017

Global Temperature Anomalies from 1880 to 2017

Weekly Animation of Arctic Sea Ice Age with Two Graphs: 1984 - 2016

Previous HoLLIE posts: Week 1, Week 2

3 Free eBooks – January 2018

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Three books – the first one for reading; the second one for reading and the images; the third for the images.

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Creevey, Caroline Alathea Stickney. A Daughter of Puritans: An Autobiography. New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons. 1916. Available Hathi Trust here. I’d found Creevey’s Flowers of field, hill and swamp and discovered the autobiography when I looked to see if there were more books from her on Internet Archive and HathiTrust. The autobiography is a good read – a snapshot of her growing up years. She lived from 1843-1920 and to book ends when she married so this is just before and during the civil war.

Dunsany, Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett, Baron with illustration by A. H. Sime. The sword of Welleran, and other stories. London: G. Allen and Sons. 1908. From Internet Archive here. The illustrations and stories are both intriguing. Both the author and the illustrator have biographies in Wikipedia.

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Pillsbury, Joanne. Moche Art and Archaeology in ancient Peru. Washington: National Gallery of Art. 2005. Available from HathiTrust here. Such a different culture than the Inca! The way the faces of people are depicted is what interested me the most….the relationship between culture and depiction of the human form in art shows how what we ‘see’ is impacted by more than the biology of sight.

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eBotanicalPrints – December 2017

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December was a big month for botanical eBooks – 28 in all. The first series (Flora Graeca) was from the early 1800s and the second (Le Jardin) was from the late 1800s. Both were full of color. There was another series (Artistic Japan) – also from the late 1800s) that was not exclusively botanical, but I like the ones that were there so much that I included them in the collection for this month.

Enjoy!

  1. Flora Graeca, sive, Plantarum rariorum historia, quas in provinciis aut insulis Graeciae V1  (1806) * Sibthorp, John et al * sample image
  2. Flora Graeca, sive, Plantarum rariorum historia, quas in provinciis aut insulis Graeciae V2  (1813) * Sibthorp, John et al * sample image
  3. Trees  * Gates, Galen; Johnson, Ethan; Clausen, Ruth Rogers *  
  4. Flora Graeca, sive, Plantarum rariorum historia, quas in provinciis aut insulis Graeciae V3  (1819) * Sibthorp, John et al * sample image
  5. Flora Graeca, sive, Plantarum rariorum historia, quas in provinciis aut insulis Graeciae V4  (1823) * Sibthorp, John et al * sample image
  6. Flora Graeca, sive, Plantarum rariorum historia, quas in provinciis aut insulis Graeciae V5  (1825) * Sibthorp, John et al * sample image
  7. Artistic Japan: illustrations and essays V1 * Bing, Siegfried * sample image
  8. Artistic Japan: illustrations and essays V2 * Bing, Siegfried * sample image
  9. Flora Graeca, sive, Plantarum rariorum historia, quas in provinciis aut insulis Graeciae V6  (1826) * Sibthorp, John et al * sample image
  10. Artistic Japan: illustrations and essays V3 * Bing, Siegfried * sample image
  11. Flora Graeca, sive, Plantarum rariorum historia, quas in provinciis aut insulis Graeciae V7  (1830) * Sibthorp, John et al * sample image
  12. Flora Graeca, sive, Plantarum rariorum historia, quas in provinciis aut insulis Graeciae V8  (1833) * Sibthorp, John et al * sample image
  13. Flora Graeca, sive, Plantarum rariorum historia, quas in provinciis aut insulis Graeciae V9  (1837) * Sibthorp, John et al * sample image
  14. Flora Graeca, sive, Plantarum rariorum historia, quas in provinciis aut insulis Graeciae V10  (1837) * Sibthorp, John et al * sample image
  15. Bulbs and tuberous-rooted plants * Allen, Charles Linnaeus * sample image
  16. Paradisi in sole paradisus terrestris * Parkinson, John * sample image
  17. Le Jardin - 1896 * Martinet, H. * sample image
  18. Le Jardin - 1897 * Martinet, H. * sample image
  19. Le Jardin - 1898 * Martinet, H. * sample image
  20. Le Jardin - 1899 * Martinet, H. * sample image
  21. Le Jardin - 1900 * Martinet, H. * sample image
  22. Le Jardin - 1901 * Martinet, H. * sample image
  23. Le Jardin - 1902 * Martinet, H. * sample image
  24. Le Jardin - 1903 * Martinet, H. * sample image
  25. British Flowering Plants * Kirby, William Forsell * sample image
  26. British Edible Fungi: how to distinguish and how to cook them * Cooke, Mordecai Cubitt * sample image
  27. A plain and easy account of British Fungi, with especial reference to the esculent and economic species  * Cooke, Mordecai Cubitt * sample image
  28. Rust, smut, mildew, & mould. An introduction to the study of microscopic Fungi.  * Cooke, Mordecai Cubitt * sample image

eBotanicalPrints – February – March 2017

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We are having some very cold days here in Maryland – starting out our days in the single digits…sometimes not making it into the 30s. A good time for me to be working on my lists of eBooks with botanical prints. Today I am featuring books I perused back in February and March of last year

In February, there were more that were photography rather than drawings or paintings. I particularly enjoyed the book about the US Botanic Garden; it was published in 2007…so it was a relatively recent collection of photographs of a familiar (botanical) place.

  1. Tentamen hydrophytologiae danicae  * Lyngbye, Hans Christian * sample image
  2. The British flora medica, or, a History of the medicinal plants of Great Britain c1v2 * Barton, Benjamin Herbert; Castle, Thomas * sample image
  3. Forty years of gardening * Hill, Anna Gilman * sample image
  4. A botanic garden for the nation: the United States Botanic Garden * Fallen, Anne-Catherine; Shimizu, Holly H.; Solit, Karen; Allen, William C. * sample image
  5. The ivy : a monograph comprising the history, uses, characteristics, and affinities of the plant, and a descriptive list of all the garden ivies in cultivation  *  Hibberd, Shirley * sample image
  6. The golden garden guide; a practical handbook of gardening and outdoor living * Strohm, John * sample image
  7. Wild flower gardening  * Taylor, Norman * sample image
  8. Alpines in color and cultivations * Mansfield, TC * sample image

 

March was more typical with several volumes of A new British Flora topping the list; they were published just after World War I in 1919. European Ferns – the last book of the month – is full of traditional botanical prints; the one I selected depicts a familiar one – rattlesnake fern!

  1. The Gardener's Travel Book * Farrington, Edward Irving * sample image
  2. Wild gardens of New England * Eaton, Walter Prichard * sample image
  3. A new British flora : British wild flowers in their natural haunts - v 02 * Horwood, A. R.; Fitch, John Nugent * sample image
  4. A new British flora : British wild flowers in their natural haunts - v 03 * Horwood, A. R.; Fitch, John Nugent * sample image
  5. A new British flora : British wild flowers in their natural haunts - v 04 * Horwood, A. R.; Fitch, John Nugent * sample image
  6. Adventures in dish gardening * Beard, Patten * sample image
  7. A new British flora : British wild flowers in their natural haunts - v 05 * Horwood, A. R.; Fitch, John Nugent * sample image
  8. Japanese Gardens * Taylor, Harriet Osgood; Tyndale, Walter * sample image
  9. Our Monsoon Plants - Bombay Natural History Society * Raut, Madhav; Lucas, Mrs. * sample image
  10. Roof Gardening  * Mellen, Ida * sample image
  11. Rock Gardens * Rockwell, F. F.; Hollrock, George L. * sample image
  12. Beautiful Gardens in America * Shelton, Louise * sample image
  13. European Ferns * Britten, James * sample image