Field Guide to the Birds
(1934)
led many naturalists to liken the achievement of its author, Roger Tory Peterson, to that of John James Audubon. That connection is
underscored at the Roger Tory Peterson Institute of Natural History in Jamestown, NY.
On exhibit there, where I snapped this photo on my
vacation in early August, was this facsimile of a four-volume edition of
Audubon’s Double Elephant Portfolio of his Birds of America. More than 400 North American species—every one known at the
time, in the 1830s—were depicted here, rendered in their natural habitat by the artist.
This leather-bound volume of a 1981 limited-press
run, owned by Peterson, was donated to the Institute in 1997, one year after
his death.
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