American curiosity : cultures of natural history in the colonial British Atlantic world / Susan Scott Parrish.

"Published for the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture, Williamsburg, Virginia."

Includes bibliographical references and index.

The British metropolis and its "America," 1584-1763. A strange overplus ; Nature's admirable regularity ; London's curious -- English bodies in America. The English humoral body ; Contagious climates ; The English body saved ; Uncouth symptoms -- Atlantic correspondence networks and the curious male colonial. Mutual commerce ; Not one rational eye ; The empirical advantage ; Becoming an F.R.S. ; Us Americans -- The nature of candid friendship. Familiar letters ; The honest friend versus the fop ; Curious love ; Gifts -- Lavinia's nature. Fatal curiosity ; A peculiar grace in the fair sex ; Specimens by every shipping ; Finding signs of the pastoral -- Indian sagacity. The most secret things of nature ; Dear and deadly grapes ; Contested mediation ; No people have better eyes ; A wonderful antidote -- African magi, slave poisoners. Topographies of slave knowledge ; Cunning ; Hiding places ; Collectors ; Poisoners ; Healers ; Obscene birds ; Forest trial, forest refuge.

Examines how various people in the British colonies understood and represented the natural world around them from the late sixteenth century through the eighteenth. The author uncovers early descriptions of American natural phenomena as well as clues to how people in the colonies construed their own identities through the natural world.

Print version record.

English.

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