USC receives first edition of 'Natural History'

"Susan Gibbes Robinson, a leading Columbia educator and philanthropist, has given a rare, first edition of Mark Catesby's 18th-century The Natural History of Carolina, Florida, and the Bahama Islands to the University of South Carolina Libraries. The two massive, leather-bound volumes, published in London in 1731 and 1743, contain the works of the British naturalist during his four-year odyssey through the wilds of South Carolina. The volumes boast 220 hand-colored, copper-plate engraved illustrations of flora and fauna on the right-hand pages, with descriptions in English and French in parallel columns on the facing pages" - Times and Democrat