Description:
Small 8vo (20cm), viii + 448pp, original brown cloth boards are stained, slightly frayed and worn around edges with corners bumped, rebacked in brown buckram with gilt lettering to title and author's name with year of print. Internally fair, pages tanned with occasional foxing and marginalia, textblock edges tanned with some warping to page edges. This book has seen better days but is complete, with all text legible and the binding firmly in one piece.John Ware (1795 - 1864) was an American physican who graduated from Harvard College and Harvard Medical School. He was one of the founding members of the Boston Society for Medical improvement and of the Boston Society for Natural History. The present work is an expansion and reworking of William Smellie's (1740 - 1795) Philosophy of Natural History, which is essentially a general biololgy textbook for students based on knowledge at the time. The definition of natural history in the 18th and 19th centuries was much wider than in the present day.… Read More