Mark Catesby
Encyclopedia
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
naturalist
Natural history
Natural history is the scientific research of plants or animals, leaning more towards observational rather than experimental methods of study, and encompasses more research published in magazines than in academic journals. Grouped among the natural sciences, natural history is the systematic study...
. Between 1731 and 1743 Catesby published his Natural History of Carolina, Florida and the Bahama Islands, the first published account of the flora and fauna of North America
North America
North America is a continent wholly within the Northern Hemisphere and almost wholly within the Western Hemisphere. It is also considered a northern subcontinent of the Americas...
. It included 220 plates of bird
Bird
Birds are feathered, winged, bipedal, endothermic , egg-laying, vertebrate animals. Around 10,000 living species and 188 families makes them the most speciose class of tetrapod vertebrates. They inhabit ecosystems across the globe, from the Arctic to the Antarctic. Extant birds range in size from...
s, reptile
Reptile
Reptiles are members of a class of air-breathing, ectothermic vertebrates which are characterized by laying shelled eggs , and having skin covered in scales and/or scutes. They are tetrapods, either having four limbs or being descended from four-limbed ancestors...
s and amphibians, fish
Fish
Fish are a paraphyletic group of organisms that consist of all gill-bearing aquatic vertebrate animals that lack limbs with digits. Included in this definition are the living hagfish, lampreys, and cartilaginous and bony fish, as well as various extinct related groups...
, insect
Insect
Insects are a class of living creatures within the arthropods that have a chitinous exoskeleton, a three-part body , three pairs of jointed legs, compound eyes, and two antennae...
s, and mammal
Mammal
Mammals are members of a class of air-breathing vertebrate animals characterised by the possession of endothermy, hair, three middle ear bones, and mammary glands functional in mothers with young...
s.
Life and works
Catesby was born on 24 March 1682 and baptized at Castle HedinghamCastle Hedingham
Castle Hedingham is a small village in northeast Essex, England, located four miles west of Halstead and is situated in the Colne Valley on the ancient road from Colchester, Essex, to Cambridge....
, Essex
Essex
Essex is a ceremonial and non-metropolitan county in the East region of England, and one of the home counties. It is located to the northeast of Greater London. It borders with Cambridgeshire and Suffolk to the north, Hertfordshire to the west, Kent to the South and London to the south west...
. His father, John Catesby, was a lawyer
Lawyer
A lawyer, according to Black's Law Dictionary, is "a person learned in the law; as an attorney, counsel or solicitor; a person who is practicing law." Law is the system of rules of conduct established by the sovereign government of a society to correct wrongs, maintain the stability of political...
and gentleman farmer
Farmer
A farmer is a person engaged in agriculture, who raises living organisms for food or raw materials, generally including livestock husbandry and growing crops, such as produce and grain...
. His mother was Elizabeth Jekyll Catesby of Hedingham Castle
Hedingham Castle
Hedingham Castle in Essex, England, is a Norman motte and bailey castle with a stone keep. For four centuries it was the primary seat of the de Vere family, Earls of Oxford.-Description:...
, Essex. The family owned a farm and house, Holgate, in Sudbury, Suffolk. An acquaintance with the naturalist John Ray
John Ray
John Ray was an English naturalist, sometimes referred to as the father of English natural history. Until 1670, he wrote his name as John Wray. From then on, he used 'Ray', after "having ascertained that such had been the practice of his family before him".He published important works on botany,...
led to Catesby becoming interested in natural history
Natural history
Natural history is the scientific research of plants or animals, leaning more towards observational rather than experimental methods of study, and encompasses more research published in magazines than in academic journals. Grouped among the natural sciences, natural history is the systematic study...
. He studied natural history in London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
before going to stay with his sister, Elizabeth Catesby Cocke, in Williamsburg, Virginia
Williamsburg, Virginia
Williamsburg is an independent city located on the Virginia Peninsula in the Hampton Roads metropolitan area of Virginia, USA. As of the 2010 Census, the city had an estimated population of 14,068. It is bordered by James City County and York County, and is an independent city...
in 1712. The death of his father, six years earlier, had left Catesby enough to live on. Elizabeth was the wife of Dr. William Cocke, who had been a member of the Council and Secretary of State for the Colony of Virginia. According to family lore, Elizabeth married Dr. Cocke, against the wishes of her parents, before emigrating to Virginia. After his stay in Williamsburg, Catesby visited the West Indies in 1714, and returned to Virginia, then home to England in 1719.
Catesby had collected seeds and botanical specimens in Virginia, which he had sent to a Hoxton
Hoxton
Hoxton is an area in the London Borough of Hackney, immediately north of the financial district of the City of London. The area of Hoxton is bordered by Regent's Canal on the north side, Wharf Road and City Road on the west, Old Street on the south, and Kingsland Road on the east.Hoxton is also a...
nurseryman Thomas Fairchild. This made his name known to other scientists in England, and in 1722 he was recommended by William Sherard
William Sherard
William Sherard was an English botanist. Next to John Ray, he was considered to be one of the outstanding English botanists of his day.-Life:...
to undertake a plant-collecting expedition to Carolina
Province of Carolina
The Province of Carolina, originally chartered in 1629, was an English and later British colony of North America. Because the original Heath charter was unrealized and was ruled invalid, a new charter was issued to a group of eight English noblemen, the Lords Proprietors, in 1663...
on behalf of the Royal Society
Royal Society
The Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge, known simply as the Royal Society, is a learned society for science, and is possibly the oldest such society in existence. Founded in November 1660, it was granted a Royal Charter by King Charles II as the "Royal Society of London"...
. Catesby settled in Charlestown
Charleston, South Carolina
Charleston is the second largest city in the U.S. state of South Carolina. It was made the county seat of Charleston County in 1901 when Charleston County was founded. The city's original name was Charles Towne in 1670, and it moved to its present location from a location on the west bank of the...
, and traveled to other parts of eastern North America and the West Indies, collecting plant
Plant
Plants are living organisms belonging to the kingdom Plantae. Precise definitions of the kingdom vary, but as the term is used here, plants include familiar organisms such as trees, flowers, herbs, bushes, grasses, vines, ferns, mosses, and green algae. The group is also called green plants or...
s and birds. Many of these specimens were sent to Hans Sloane
Hans Sloane
Sir Hans Sloane, 1st Baronet, PRS was an Ulster-Scot physician and collector, notable for bequeathing his collection to the British nation which became the foundation of the British Museum...
in London. Catesby returned to England in 1726.
Catesby spent the next seventeen years preparing his Natural History. Publication was financed by an interest-free loan from one of the fellows of the Royal Society, the Quaker Peter Collinson
Peter Collinson FRS
Peter Collinson was a Fellow of the Royal Society, an avid gardener, and the middleman for an international exchange of scientific ideas in mid-18th century London...
. Catesby was the first to use folio-sized coloured plates in natural history books. He learnt how to etch the plates himself. The first eight plates had no backgrounds, but from then on Catesby included plants with his animals. He completed the first volume in 1731, and in February 1733 he was elected a fellow of the Royal Society. The second volume was completed in 1743, and in 1746 he produced a supplement from material sent to him by friends in America, particularly John Bartram
John Bartram
*Hoffmann, Nancy E. and John C. Van Horne, eds., America’s Curious Botanist: A Tercentennial Reappraisal of John Bartram 1699-1777. Memoirs of the American Philosophical Society, vol. 243. ....
. Catesby died just before Christmas 1749 and was buried on 23 December.
Carolus Linnaeus
Carolus Linnaeus
Carl Linnaeus , also known after his ennoblement as , was a Swedish botanist, physician, and zoologist, who laid the foundations for the modern scheme of binomial nomenclature. He is known as the father of modern taxonomy, and is also considered one of the fathers of modern ecology...
included much of the information in the Natural History in the 10th edition of his Systema Naturae
Systema Naturae
The book was one of the major works of the Swedish botanist, zoologist and physician Carolus Linnaeus. The first edition was published in 1735...
(1758).
External links
Works- Mark Catesby (1731). The Natural History of Carolina, Florida and (v1). Online scanned edition from Rare Book RoomRare Book RoomRare Book Room is an educational website for the repository of digitally scanned rare books made freely available to the public.Starting around 1996 the California based company Octavo began scanning rare and important books from libraries around the world. These scans were done at extremely high...
. - Mark Catesby (1743). The Natural History of Carolina, Florida and (v2). Online scanned edition from Rare Book RoomRare Book RoomRare Book Room is an educational website for the repository of digitally scanned rare books made freely available to the public.Starting around 1996 the California based company Octavo began scanning rare and important books from libraries around the world. These scans were done at extremely high...
. - Mark Catesby, The Natural History of Carolina, Florida and the Bahamas Electronic edition: high quality images and user-friendly text from the American Studies Programs at the University of Virginia