John Thayers Copy (1 results)

Hardcover. Condition: Very Good. Limited Edition. xxii, (2), 19-316 pages; Limited Edition of 100 signed copies, of which this No. 41. Illustrated with 64 plates with printed tissueguards, including frontispiece. Original owner's bookplate "John E. Thayer / Lancaster" (see below), otherwise clean and secure in original white cloth binding with gilt lettering at spine and image of a swan on front board. T.E.G., foredge uncut. Cloth has scattered foxing, spine scratched and toned, worn at head of spine. The Swan, Geese, Ducks, and Mergansers of North America. With accounts of their habits, nesting, migration, and dispersions, together with descriptions of the adults and young, and keys for the ready identification of the species. "A book for the sportsman, and for those desirous of knowing how to distinguish these web-footed birdsand to learn their ways in their native wilds." Daniel Giraud Elliot (1835 1915) was a wealthy American zoologist and the founder of the American Ornithologist Union. He made expeditions to Africa and Alaska and was the first curator of zoology at the Field Museum in Chicago. From 1869 to 1879, he was in London and established strong links to British ornithologists and naturalists. Elliot used his wealth to publish a series of sumptuous books on birds and other animals. Elliot wrote the text himself and commissioned artists such as Joseph Wolf and Joseph Smit, both of whom had worked for John Gould, to provide the illustrations. Col. John E. Thayer (1862-1933) was one of twin boys born to Nathaniel Thayer II (a banker who financed building Harvard's Thayer Hall) and Cornelia van Rensselaer Thayer. Thayer graduated from Harvard College in 1885 and engaged in business before becoming one of the world's most prominent ornithologists. Thayer began collecting North American bird specimens and housed his collections close to his home in Lancaster. He used his wealth to sponsor various natural history expeditions and in 1906 he sent Wilmot W. Brown Jr. to Guadalupe Island off Pacific Mexico. In 1913, Thayer and other Harvard graduates sponsored an expedition to Alaska and Siberia, with Joseph S. Dixon and Winthrop Sprague Brooks as zoological collectors. He eventually built a beautiful brick building in 1903, opening it to the public as a museum a year later. Thayer became ill in 1928, and donated his collection of 28,000 skins and 15,000 eggs and nests to Harvard. These included the first clutches ever collected of spoon-billed sandpiper and surfbird. After Thayer's death Harvard received his collection of 3,500 mounted birds.