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Rare Book
Exhibition July 26th at Reef Relief Environmental
Center
500 Years
of Antiquarian Books on Corals and Coral Reefs
You’re invited to a special
viewing of the early editions of more than 500 years of
publishing on corals and coral reefs on Saturday, July 26th,
2008 from 4pm—8 pm at the Reef Relief Environmental Center, 631
Greene Street in Key West.
The books are part of the
private collection of Dr. James W. Porter, a coral reef
scientist and a member of Reef Relief’s Scientific Advisory
Board. He has built a professional library of more than 3,000
books and monographs on corals and coral reefs, dating from the
1500’s on. It is the only known library of its kind dedicated
to this subject, and is rich in material published in the 17th,
18th, and 19th centuries.
| “This is certainly the
first and also without doubt the last time this kind of
collection will be shown in the Florida Keys,” noted Dr.
Porter. “On display will be the earliest known drawing
(1599) of a taxonomically identifiable coral, plus James
D. Dana’s Atlas of Zoophytes (1849), an
elephant folio of hand water-colored paintings of
reef-building corals. Only 75 copies of this monograph
were ever produced, and of these, only 15 were painted.
This presentation copy was painted on Wattman paper and
illustrated by some of the same “dry-brush”
watercolorists who produced Audubon’s Birds of
North America.”
Dozens of manuscripts from the early
1700’s will be shown debating whether corals were plants
or animals, including the original published works of
Linnaeus (who said they were plants) and his own Ph.D.
student, John Ellis (who asserted that they were
animals) expounding their bitter feud over this
controversy. The collection contains some of the early
works of Charles Darwin. Darwin never visited the
Caribbean and in the First Edition of his book, On
the Structure and Distribution of Coral Reefs,
he downplayed the importance of coral reefs in the New
World. Subsequently, his publisher urged the reissue of
this book, including a most unusual frontispiece called
“Second Edition, Revised” to emphasize that this initial
deficiency had been corrected, and that the new edition
was worth buying. |
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The event is free and open
to the public. Donations are encouraged to support Reef Relief’s
nonprofit efforts to protect coral reefs. Please drop by, bring
a camera, and be prepared to see an amazing fusion of art,
science, and history. For more information, contact Reef Relief
at (305) 294-3100, email
reef@reefrelief.org, or go online to
www.reefrelief.org. |
