Description

Hardcover, dark blue buckram lettered in gold, no dust-jacket as issued. 122 pages. This second reprint edition, the Commemorative Edition, is published in commemoration of the one-hundredth anniversary of the first publication of Days Afield on Staten Island,, the first being published in 1892. New preface by Guy V. Molinari, President of the Borough of Staten Island. William Thompson Davis was a native Staten Islander, born in 1862. At various times referred to as a conservationist, a botanist, a biologist, and a naturalist, he was both a scientist and an historian, chronicling both the people and the environment of his native borough in a number of books and writings. His two most notable works were Days Afield on Staten Island and Staten Island and Its People, which he co-authored with Charles W. Leng. “Davis was a thorough naturalist and scientist who recorded his field observations carefully. His 1892 book, Days Afield on Staten Island, describes many of his experiences and observations of natural history here. His collections of local insects are still preserved in the archives of the Staten Island Museum.” [Clay Wollney, for the Staten Island Advance Jan. 20, 2015] Davis was best known among his peers as an entomologist and could often be found exploring Staten Island’s wild places, his insect net in hand. It was these field trips and explorations which informed the present volume, for while America may have been experiencing the Gilded Age, Days Afield is more concerned with fauna and flora, than robber barons and high society. Probably the best locally written natural history of Staten Island produced during the latter half of the nineteenth century. A square, sound, tight copy. The first half dozen pages of text show brief underlining, else a fine copy with no owner’s name or book-plate. Buckram covers are clean, with sharp corners and no marks. Cover in fine condition. Overall a very good+ copy of this title.