Frank M. Chapman in Florida: His Journals and Letters, Compiled and Edited by Elizabeth S. Austin.

Octavo, red cloth (hardcover), gilt letters, map illustrated endpapers, vii, 228 pp. Very Good, with lightly rubbed edges. From Introduction: Some years ago Dr. Dean Amadon, Chairman of the Department of Birds at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, sent to the Florida State Museum at Gainesville a packet of letters and journals which Frank M. Chapman had written in Florida, most of them while he was living in Gainesville in the 1880s and 1890s. Dr. Amadon's letter accompanying the material stated, "Inasmuch as Gainesville has become a center of natural history studies, where long-term research projects may be carried out, it seems that some of this material might be of use." [The Chapman journals and letters] were not just a history of, or a natural history of, the birds of Florida. They were the story of a career within a career, and a beautiful picture of the unspoiled countryside as it existed in many parts of Florida before 1900. With other available material, the story emerged of an enthusiastic young man coming to a sparsely settled Florida, observing its growth and development, and eventually becoming a world-famous ornithologist who still retained his youthful joy in Florida's fauna and flora. Florida, Floridiana, Florida History, Natural History, Ornithology, Americana, U.S.-iana, American History, U. S. History aslic.…