Catesby, Mark
"The Purple Gross Beak"
[with Poison Wood]

Mark Catesby.  "The Purple Gross Beak". [with Poison Wood]. From Gentleman's Magazine. 

London: Edward Cave, 1753.  6 1/4 x 4 1/4 (image).  Octavo.  Wood engraving.  Very good condition. 

Following the death of Mark Catesby in 1749, interest in his pictures of American flora and fauna continued beyond issuing reprints of his original plates.  The pictures of ornithology were issued by Seligman in Germany and Buffon in France throughout the rest of the century.  The most unusual and scarce are the woodcuts that appeared in the Gentleman's Magazine in the early 1750s.  Frick and Stearns have stated that Edward Cave, the editor, "found Catesby's birds and plants worth printing [thus] demonstrated a popular interest in these things, which, in the form in which they were first published, were beyond the financial capacities of most men." Mark Catesby: The Colonial Audubon, p. 100.  

Click the links below to view others from this series:

“Red Bird”

“Little Thrush”