Botanical Collection]. Flora collected by an affluent English botanical enthusiast.
Botanical Collection. A most impressive illustration of flora collected by an affluent English botanical enthusiast who travelled the world between 1890 and 1893.. 1890. Qto.
Nineteenth Century scrap book containing a voluminous collection of plant specimens from around the world compiled from 1890-1893, including an early voyage to Alaska. Original green cloth boards, gilt borders fading slightly, otherwise very good condition, a pleasing volume with well preserved plant samples pasted to 35 pages, with locales and dates inscribed throughout.
The privileged traveller and avid plant collector, Julia T. Buck, is identified by her ownership to front board, and has amassed hundreds of plant samples from the northern hemisphere, including Alaska and Russia, as well as several western European countries. Julia's tour to America saw her into then remote areas of Alaska before the onset of tourism, where she pinched some dainty miniscule flowers to display on her album's very first page, these from Juneau, Sitka and the Muir Glacier.
Few would have been so fortunate to visit Alaska at the time, unless of wealthy means, and this would have been a most adventurous journey in relatively undeveloped regions. Gold mining had started in 1870 from placers southeast of Juneau, but the Alaska Gold Rush and subsequent development would not take place until four years later, 1897-1899. Julia's journey also precedes the famous Harriman Alaska Expedition of 1899, a maritime expedition arranged by wealthy railroad magnate Edward Harriman, who brought with him an elite community of scientists, artists, photographers, and naturalists to explore and document the Alaskan coast, including five botanists. She reached the Muir Glacier only 25 years after John Muir, the naturalist for whom it is named first explored it.
Prior to 1900, most of the steamships that came to Alaska were owned by Pacific Coast Steamship Company but in the first decade of the new century, three other lines, Alaska Steamship Company, the Canadian Pacific Railroad Company and the Humboldt Steamship Company, were also plying the inside waters. It would appear, according to her annotation beside a plant collected from the Selkirk Glacier in that Julia travelled with the Canadian Pacific Railroad Company. While visiting Yellowstone National Park she collected samples at Mammoth Hot Springs, Fountain Geyser, Yellowstone Fall and the Norris Basin.
We further find samples from Sully Springs in North Dakota. The volume is replete with foliage from Rome, Wales, Ireland, Scotland, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Germany, France, Austria, as well as clippings from Gibraltar in Spain and Tangier in Africa. The homes and gardens of several historical figures are represented here in foliage, some of which include the cottage garden of Ann Hathaway - wife of William Shakespeare, the hometown of Sir Walter Scott, the Alloway Kirk ruins and the Melrose Abbey in Scotland, the tomb of Scifios Africanus and the palaces of Julius Ceasar and Caligula (Gaius) in Rome, and Haverhill in Massachusetts - the birthplace of the famous American poet John Greenleaf Whittier. Several pages feature elegant displays from the mountains and glaciers of Norway. Singular yet noteworthy samples are found from Saint Petersburg, Pompeii, Tangier, and the White House Conservatory in Washington D.C. Germany's famous edelweiss flower is prominent and still soft to the touch after 120 years. An artistic arrangement represents Stonehenge flora, another of Oberammergau in Bavaria, and of Zermatt, Laurel and acanthus leafs represent ancient Roman locales including Palatine Hill.
Print Inquire
