Kalm, Peter:

$400 · Offered by William Reese Company · No longer available

TRAVELS INTO NORTH AMERICA; CONTAINING ITS NATURAL HISTORY, AND A CIRCUMSTANTIAL ACCOUNT OF ITS PLANTATIONS AND AGRICULTURE IN GENERAL.... A nice copy of the text to this important early edition of Kalm's travels, lacking the plates and map. This is second English edition, translated by George Reinhold Forster, after the Swedish first edition of 1753-61 and the rare first English edition published in Warrington in 1770-71. Kalm was in America in 1748-49 and made a notable trip into the back country of New York with naturalist John Bartram, as well as travelling in more settled regions. He was one of the most notable early American naturalists, and made important contributions to the study of American botany. Interestingly, the work also contains brief Algonquian and Inuit vocabularies.In his dedication, Forster writes the text will "display to the British nation, the circumstances of a country which is so happy as to be under its protection." While the American colonists might have agreed during the years of the book's first production, by the time this translation edition was produced such affection for Great Britain had clearly subsided."One of the most important and reliable eighteenth-century accounts of American natural history, social organization, and political situation. Kalm gives especially important accounts of the American Swedish settlements" - Streeter.

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