Williams, Samuel:

$2,250 · Offered by William Reese Company · No longer available

THE NATURAL AND CIVIL HISTORY OF VERMONT. First edition of what is generally considered the first history of Vermont and notably featuring the author's observations on climate change. Additionally, this copy contains relevant manuscript annotations by a previous owner, likely Theodore Lincoln of Dennysville, Maine, a friend of naturalist John James Audubon, recording historical climate data, compiled from more than thirty years of firsthand weather observations, supplementing similar data given by the author in the text. The author, Samuel Williams, was at the time of publication a minister in Rutland, Vermont, and the former Hollis Professor of Mathematicks and Natural Philosophy at Harvard. The Natural and Civil History of Vermont, explains Williams in the book's preface, "is designed to describe the operations of nature and society, in the…state of Vermont." Williams here insists that in Vermont, as in the rest of the newly United States, "nature and society had combined to produce and preserve freedom." The work includes chapters on the natural resources, climate, vegetable production (with a scientific treatise on the effect of trees on the environment), natural history, native Indians, early settlement, relations with the neighboring states, social institutions and customs, government, and the American Revolution. Included also is a folding frontispiece map of the state engraved by J. Whitelaw.Significantly, the chapter on "Climate" contains Williams' account of anthrop

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