Description
Illustrations of the Birds of Jamaica. London: Jacob van Voorst, 1849. Large 8vo, plate volume only, 52 hand-coloured lithographed plates, some heightened with gum arabic, 4pp. text including title, contemporary half morocco, light worming slightly affecting title and margin of 2nd leaf, light stain to some inner margins, lower margin of 7 plates strengthened on verso, one plate (Himantopus nigricollis) with loss to image
Footnote
Provenance: The Library of a Country House.
Note: A Rare Work by "the father of Jamaican Ornithology".
Gosse had been interested in natural history since childhood and by the age of 34 had already published popular scientific books and contributed scholarly papers to the Royal Society. In 1844 he travelled to Jamaica to collect exotic insects and other specimens on a commercial basis. Gosse spent 18 of the happiest months of his life in Jamaica, and collected insects assiduously, some 7,800 of them. But his real interests lay more in ornithology. This fascination led to the publication of three books: The Birds of Jamaica in 1847, its accompanying plate volume, Illustrations of the Birds of Jamaica in 1849, and A Naturalist’s Sojourn in Jamaica in 1851. His books were well received at the time but none were reprinted.
Gosse was meticulous and painstaking in his observations, drawings and watercolours, saying that he devoted himself to recording “the condition of living things, of things in a state of nature … their songs and cries; their actions, in ease and under the pressure of circumstances; their affections and passions, towards their young, towards each other, towards other animals, towards man; their various arts and devices, to protect their progeny, to procure food, to escape from their enemies, to defend themselves from attacks; their ingenious resources for concealment”, and so on. Gosse also succeeded in conveying in words the impression of bird calls and songs, a very hard thing to do, analysed their nests in minute detail and kept birds in captivity whenever he had the chance, the better to observe them at close quarters.
The Birds of Jamaica, with the illustrated plate volume, Illustrations of the Birds of Jamaica, is regarded as the ornithological classic of the English-speaking Caribbean, and David Lack in Island Biology Illustrated by the Lands Birds of Jamaica notes that “it was far ahead of its time and remained one of the best bird books on any part of the world for at least half a century", while Gosse himself has become known to posterity as "the Father of Jamaican ornithology." The text volume is easy to procure at a nominal sum.