Volume 43, Number 16 · October 17, 1996
Discovering the New World
By Patrick O'Brian
The Travels and Other Writings of William Bartram
by William Bartram
Knopf, 701 pp., $37.50
The Natures of John and William Bartram
by Thomas P. Slaughter
Library of America, 304 pp., $27.50
There may be other readers on the far side of the Atlantic whose view of the American landscape in the early days is limited to Captain John Smith and George Catlin, the interval being filled with dimly remembered wars, theological disputes, Red Men, innumerable bears, and, of course, Audubon. But now this near-vacuity is replenished with the clear, distinct human beings, animals, and above all plants that inhabit the works of two American naturalists, John Bartram and his son William, whose lives cover the whole of the eighteenth century and more, an exceptionally interesting period in which the North American flora and fauna were virtually intact.
Review, 3554 words
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