A Species of Eternity
   Joseph Kastner
  1977 E.P.Dutton NY USA
   ISBN: 0394490339


Columbus had reported the trees & plants in the New World were as unlike Europe's as night was to day. Here are the stories & proofs from adventurous travelers & settlers who wandered purposefully through the fresh American wilderness with pen & ink in hand to sketch & write about the wonders before them.

Our European ancestors, when first arriving here, had many affairs to take care of yet, time & again, as if drawn by some enchantment, they trekked through this unmapped land filling bags with seeds, boxes with birds & bottles with insects. These they sent across the Atlantic to delighted & insatiable naturalists in the Old Countries. Americans forested European parks with maples & conifers, filled collectors' cabinets with birds & snakes, enlivened their gardens with amphibians & flowers.

The men who appear in this book are known today for their contributions to science, art, politics & literature, yet they have a more special hold on the world's memory, for they have gained what one of them happily called “a species of eternity”; their names borne by the subjects of their science - the flowers, birds, frogs et al that they found, classified & brought to the notice of naturalists.

Being an immigrant myself, remembering clearly my first impressions of the flora & fauna of my first years in America, this collection of recollections spoke volumes to me. In A Species of Eternity I learnt more of who settled this country, what worried them & what they pondered about than in any history book. These men were all literate after the lights of their time, articulate & rather humorous. I relished becoming acquainted with such luminaries as Cadwallader Colden, Peter Collinson, John Bartram, Thomas Jefferson, John James Audubon & Asa Grey among others.

Here is The Master of Coldengham in the upper Hudson River reaches who, by dint of shipping his collections to the great Dutch botanist, Gronovius, was the first American to be introduced into the international circle of natural scientists which was the eighteenth century's most pervasive & influential intellectual group. Its members were found from Siberia to South America & by their incessant correspondence, they kept information & ideas moving through all the civilized world. Luckily for us, that correspondence has been kept & Joseph Kastner has woven an informative, readable & absorbing treasure of the history of the naturalist movement in the New World.

When I bought this book, way back in the 70s, such large, full color plate paperbacks were costly & I have nursed this tome through all my moves, because no matter where I am I can pick it up & it will refresh my palate for this wondrous land & the botanists, ornithologists & zoologists who came here.
(05/09/99)

Rebecca