This the 300th anniversary of Mark Catesby's arrival in the New World. Catesby was a naturalist and artist.
With the financial backing of influential Englishmen, Catesby came to Charleston in 1722 to gather specimens and notes for an illustrated work on the natural history of the Carolina region. In 1725 he left Charleston and journeyed to Florida and the Bahamas. Back in England, he began preparing the plates and text for publication—teaching himself engraving. His richly illustrated work, The Natural History of Carolina, Florida, and the Bahamas, appeared in two volumes—the first completed in 1731 and the second in 1743.The European naturalist, Linnaeus, used Catesby’s work for the inclusion of North American flora and fauna in his system of classification of plants and animals. Mark Catesby’s publication was the first extensively illustrated work on the natural history of any region in North America. - South Carolina from A to Z