Author: SCAMMON, Charles M.
Title: The Marine Mammals of the North-Western Coast of North America, described and illustrated; ... with an account of the American Whale-Fishery.
Description: San Francisco, John H. Carmany 1874. Quarto contemporary half morocco; 320,vpp, 27 litho plates (6 folding, these mounted on linen at the time of binding), illustrations through the text. Ex parliamentary library with their gilt crest on the front boards and incorporated into the spine, not marked inside; foxing but a handsome copy. ¶ A handsome book, in its way a sophistication of a cave painter's delineation of his prey. Here Scammon - a whale and seal hunter - has turned naturalist, creating a modern scientific and historical monument with such care that a few of the illustrations show an almost transcendental love of what is, or soon will be, a product. At the end is a whaling vocabulary and an inventory of stores for a first-class whale-ship for a Cape Horn voyage.

Keywords: technology natural history c19th America sea mammals whales dolphins seals porpoises trades manufactures whaling maritime nautical