Details - The Naturalists Companion containing drawings with suitable descriptions of a vast variety of Quadrupeds, Birds, Fishes, Serpent and Insects; & accurately copied either from Living Animals or from the stuffed Specimens in the Museums of the College and Dublin Society, to which is added drawings of several antiquities, natural productions &c containd in those Museums -- illustrated manuscript by Kenelm Henry Digby

Title

The Naturalists Companion containing drawings with suitable descriptions of a vast variety of Quadrupeds, Birds, Fishes, Serpent and Insects; & accurately copied either from Living Animals or from the stuffed Specimens in the Museums of the College and Dublin Society, to which is added drawings of several antiquities, natural productions &c containd in those Museums -- illustrated manuscript by Kenelm Henry Digby

Title Variants

Alternative: Digbys Naturalists Companion

By

Digby, Kenelm Henry, 1800-1880

Type

Book

Material

Published material

Publication info

1810-1817

Notes

The manuscript describes and illustrates a variety of animals, fish, insects, natural and ethnographic productions and antiquities from England, Ireland, India, Spain, Africa, China, America, Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific. It includes a number of Australian animals, such as the kangaroo, and illustrations of Pacific artifacts collected on Captain James Cooks second and third voyages held by the Dublin Society and the Trinity College Museum.It seems that Digby composed the text himself although much of its content is drawn from published authorities. He cites numerous standard reference sources such as George Buffon's "Natural History". The text, which concentrates mainly on animals (about 300 of the illustrations are natural history) rather than ethnographic or antiquarian specimens, is largely anecdotal. He is not interested in the anatomy or physiology of the animals he describes, and nor does he attempt to position them within a classification scheme. He uses popular rather than scientific names.It is significant to note that living Australian natural history specimens had reached Dublin by the early 1810s as part, it appears, of a commercial menagerie.

Kenelm Henry Digby was born in Ireland in 1800 to a prominent Protestant family, and died in London in 1880, his home for most of his later life. He attended Trinity College, Cambridge, where he took a B.A. in 1819. At Cambridge he converted to Catholicism, and devoted the rest of his life to literature and writing, with a particular interest in Catholic theology and medieval antiquarianism. His work on the medieval period, Mores Catholic, or Ages of Faith, ran to eleven volumes (1831-1840) and provided an encyclopedic account of medieval life from a Catholic viewpoint. He was considered a moderately important writer during his own lifetime -- see Dictionary of National Biography; The Catholic Encyclopedia, 1908.