Lot 9: PARKINSON, JOHN.

THEATRUM BOTANICUM: THE THEATRE OF PLANTS. OR, AN HERBALL OF A LARGE EXTENT. LONDON: THO[MAS] COTES, 1640

first edition, folio (338 x 217mm.), numerous woodcut illustrations in the text, modern cloth binding, lacking [A]1 and 2 and all of 6G, 6H and 6I, pages 471 to 718 detached from binding, numerous small tears with some crude attempts at repair, staining, rust holes, slight worming, binding defective and broken

PROVENANCE

Seamor A. Gardiner; Robert Steevens, who notes on (a)6 that he purchased it from Gardiner in 1690 for two pounds and six shillings; Alexander Wilson, ownership inscription dated 1762 on p.423

LITERATURE

Henrey 286; Hunt 235; Nissen BBI 1490; Norman 1643; Pritzel 7749; STC 19302

NOTE

annotated by robert steevens (1640 - post 1717) with details of the natural history of carolina.

This massively used and copiously annotated volume is a remarkable record of the botany of early Carolina and the scientific methods of one of its inhabitants. The book adds immeasurably to our information about Robert Steevens of Goose Creek, Carolina, a botanist and member of the South Carolina Assembly about whom hitherto little was known save via some correspondence with fellow botanists James Petiver and Martin Lister part quoted by Raymond Phineas Stearns in Science in the British Colonies of America, 1970, p.294 and some comments on his countrymen's failure to convert the native Indians, cited by Edgar Legare Penning in "The Rev Francis Le Jau's Work Among Indians and Negro Slaves", in Journal of Southern History, Vol.1 No.14, November 1935.

Steevens provides a fascinating insight into the peculiarites of the Carolingian varieties of various species. He garnered his knowledge from close personal observation, literary sources such as Richard Ligon's True and Exact History of Barbados which he quotes and word-of-mouth (including some English former prisoners of war whom the Spanish had forced to dig out certain roots). He provides alternative local names and such notes as "the leaves and body (of the yucca) is much more beautiful then in England". He has sometimes illustrated his comments with diagrams including the yucca fruit (p.153), Bindweede leaves (p.169) and a rattlesnake tail (p.420, "it is reported they are as many years old as they have rattles").

His notes, which appear on over fifty leaves, are full of interest and incident and include his personal sighting of a sperm whale in Bermuda, an incident on a Carolina plantation where both oats and barley grew from the same roots and the penchant of the local Indians for a particular type of mushroom which they "pund to pouder then it resembels pure white flower, which they mingel with other food and eat it".