The Natural History of the Bahamas fills a void in the literature on the avian and terrestrial species found there and is an overall excellent guide.— Sandra D. Buckner, Past President of the Bahamas National Trust Take this book with you on your next trip to the Bahamas or the Turks and Caicos Islands or keep it close to hand in your travel library. The Natural History of the Bahamas offers the most comprehensive coverage of the terrestrial and coastal flora and fauna on the islands of the Bahamas archipelago, as well as of the region's natural history and ecology. Readers will gain an appreciation for the importance of conserving the diverse lifeforms on these special Caribbean islands. A detailed introduction to the history, geology, and climate of the islands. Beautifully illustrated, with more than seven hundred color photographs showcasing the diverse plants, fungi, and animals found on the Bahamian Archipelago.

Their descriptions in English and French.

THIS BOOK EXPLORES the many complex historical connections between the UNited States of America and the Commonwealth of The Bahamas. Beginning with an overview of shared early Spanish colonization, the book is the first attempt to provide a comprehensive study of the impact of the sequential development of the United States on events in the emerging Bahamas, placing the heretofore marginalized history of the island nation firmly into the orbit of Atlantic historiographical literature. Among other things, the books sheds light on the role played by the islands in a series of significant events in the U.S. history. These include the American Revolution, in which four of the initial official military actions of the fledgling U.S. Navy comprised repeated invasions of British-controlled Nassau, capital of the Bahamas; the American Civil War during which Nassau became on of the main bases for supply of vital goods and ammunition to the Confederacy; the intrigues of the Volstead Act, which legislated prohibition but also caused the temporary transformation of Bahama ISlands into major transshipment centers for the smuggling of alcoholic beverages to a multitude of prohibition-defiant and "thirsty" Americans; and the significant role placed by Bahamian migrants in the creation of the city of Miami and other areas of south Florida. The author draws on a wealth of tapped and untapped primary sources and presents a new perspective on the "Bahamian experience" that helped to define the self-proclaimed American credo of "Manifest Destiny."

"An excellent case study of a little-studied and poorly known community experiencing the processes of identity formation and culture change."--Brent R. Weisman, University of South Florida This is the first full-length ethnography of a unique community within the African diaspora. Rosalyn Howard traces the history of the isolated "Red Bays" community of the Bahamas, from their escape from the plantations of the American South through their utilization of social memory in the construction of new identity and community. Some of the many African slaves escaping from southern plantations traveled to Florida and joined the Seminole Indians, intermarried, and came to call themselves Black Seminoles. In 1821, pursued and harassed by European Americans through the First Seminole War, approximately 200 members of this group fled to Andros Island, where they remained essentially isolated for nearly 150 years. Drawing on archival and secondary sources in the United States and the Bahamas as well as interviews with members of the present-day Black Seminole community on Andros Island, Howard reconstructs the story of the Red Bays people. She chronicles their struggles as they adapt to a new environment and forge a new identity in this insular community and analyzes the former slaves' relationship with their Native American companions. Black Seminoles in contemporary Red Bays number approximately 290, the majority of whom are descended directly from the original settlers. As part of her research, Howard lived for a year in this small community, recording its oral history and analyzing the ways in which that history informed the evolving identity of the people. Her treatment dispels the air of mystery surrounding the Black Seminoles of Andros and provides a foundation for further anthropological and historical investigations.

This book explores the life and work of the 18th-century English artist, explorer, naturalist, and author Mark Catesby (1683-1749). During Catesby's lifetime, science was poised to shift from a world of amateur virtuosi to one of professional experts. He worked against a backdrop of global travel that incorporated collecting and direct observation of nature. Catesby spent two prolonged periods in the New World--in Virginia (1712-19) and South Carolina and the Bahamas (1722-26)--which he documented in Natural History of Carolina, Florida and the Bahama Islands, the first large-format, color-plate book on the natural history of North America. Interweaving elements of art history, history of science, natural history illustration, painting materials, book history, paper studies, garden history, and colonial history, this volume brings together a wealth of unpublished images as well as previously unpublished letters by Catesby, with contemporary accounts of his collecting and encounters in the wild, and details of the materials and techniques of packing and transporting plants and animals across the Atlantic.

A comprehensive ornithological guide introducing both visitors and residents to the bird life of the Bahamas Archipelago and the neighbouring Turks and Caicos Islands. The text contains colour photos and information on the breeding birds of the region plus the most commonly recorded migrants that either pass through on their way to other destinations or stay during the winter season. The author has divided the birds into two sections, land and water. Not every bird that has been recorded in the region is included but emphasis is on how to recognize or identify the various species and their plumages plus information on how the birds are distributed in the islands and whether or not they are common, uncommon or rare. Behaviour and habitat preferences are covered as well as calls and songs.

How does law come to be stated as substantive rules, and then how does it change? In this collection of discussions from the James S. Carpentier Lectures in legal history and criticism, one of Britain's most acclaimed legal historians S. F. C. Milsom focuses on the development of English common law—the intellectually coherent system of substantive rules that courts bring to bear on the particular facts of individual cases—from which American law was to grow. Milsom discusses the differences between the development of land law and that of other kinds of law and, in the latter case, how procedural changes allowed substantive rules first to be stated and then to be circumvented. He examines the invisibility of early legal change and how adjustment to conditions was hidden behind such things as the changing meaning of words. Milsom points out that legal history may be more prone than other kinds of history to serious anachronism. Nobody ever states his assumptions, and a legal writer, addressing his contemporaries, never provided a glossary to warn future historians against attributing their own meanings to his words and therefore their own assumptions to his world. Formal continuity has enabled nineteenth-century assumptions to be carried back, in some respects as far back as the twelfth century. This book brings together Milsom's efforts to understand the uncomfortable changes that lie beneath that comforting formal surface. Those changes were too large to have been intended by anyone at the time and too slow to be perceived by historians working within the short periods now imposed by historical convention. The law was made not by great men making great decisions but by man-sized men unconcerned with the future and thinking only about their own immediate everyday difficulties. King Henry II, for example, did not intend the changes attributed to him in either land law or criminal law; the draftsman of De Donis did not mean to create the entail; nobody ever dreamed up a fiction with intent to change the law.