The Naturalist's Pocket-Book, or Tourist's Companion, being a brief introduction to the different branches of natural history, with approved methods for collecting and preserving the various productions of nature

Description:

George Graves (1784-1839?), a Fellow of the Linnean Society, was a bookseller and colourist, and the author of eight works on natural history. A biography of Graves by W.H. Curtis, notes that 'throughout his working life he was harassed by financial worries from which the proceeds of his publications never sufficed to free him' (Watsonia, vol. 2, 1951, pp. 93-99). Prior to the appearance of the Naturalist’s Pocket-book, he had already published British Ornithology (1811) and Ovarium Britannicum (1816) and had served as editor of the new edition of William Curtis’s Flora Londinensis.

Issued only a few years after the close of the Napoleonic wars, which had long curtailed travel on the Continent, Graves’s Pocket-book offered timely instruction for those setting out on excursions both at home and abroad. The Preface describes it as a guide to the collecting and preservation of specimens in zoology, botany, and mineralogy, 'particularly adapted for the use of those, whose business or pleasures may lead them to make excursions in our own, or to visit foreign countries.'

As Anne Larson has observed (in Cultures of Natural History, 1996), the work is firmly ‘in the tradition of Francis Bacon,’ embodying the belief that the systematic exploration of nature’s bounty was to be pursued for the benefit of humankind. Among its most notable features is Graves’s advocacy of careful note-taking: he recommends that the naturalist carry a notebook ruled with columns under prescribed headings, and provides a model page for such observations, an approach he acknowledges was first proposed by Daines Barrington.

There were two issues of the Pocket-book, which differ only in the title page; one gives the printer as W. & S. Graves, and is undated; the other is dated 1818, printed for Longman, etc. (The Preface is dated June 1817). The work also appears to have been issued with the five zoological plates coloured or uncoloured. In this copy the five zoological plates are hand-coloured, the three plates of collecting equipment were always uncoloured. The two pages of advertisements detail other works by the author.

BM(NH) p. 709; Mullens & Swann pp. 246/247; not in Nissen.

Condition

8vo, cont. half calf, rubbed/scuffed, gt dec. to spine, leather title-piece, front joint cracked and a little tender, marbled boards and edges. Light foxing to some plates and facing caption leaves. Good.