150 best Minnesota books #8, #9, and #10: Three nature books

by Patrick Coleman, Minnesota Historical Society • May 9, 2008 •

Natural history is destiny—in Minnesota anyway. Hell, if it weren’t for the beaver, the only language you could hear around here would be Dakota. The great outdoors and the environment are crucial to our identity as Minnesotans, as many books on the 150 list will eventually attest. We care about our surroundings. We keep phenological journals to remember when the ice went out and when the first foolish robins show up in our back yards and we keep it to ourselves when we find a patch of morels. Fortunately for us, scientists have been describing the flora and fauna of this state for 150 years and surely will never be done. Let’s get started with three of the “best” books in this field.

Thomas S. Roberts. The Birds of Minnesota. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1932.

C. L. Herrick. Mammals of Minnesota: A Scientific and Popular Account. Minneapolis: Harrison and Smith, State Printers, 1892.

Conway MacMillan. Minnesota Plant Life. Saint Paul: Geological and Natural History Survey, 1899.

In my opening post for this blog I was only slightly joking about Nachtrieb’s The Leeches of Minnesota being one of the 150 best Minnesota books. It is more beautiful than The Mosquitoes of Minnesota by William Owen and not as compelling as Washburn’s The Hymenoptera of Minnesota. Roberts’s two-volume work, however, is the king of these natural histories. See this glowing review of Roberts in the July 1932 issue of Auk. The Birds of Minnesota has gorgeous illustrations by Allan Brooks, F. Lee Jaques [of whom we will hear more later], Walter Breckenridge, Walter Alois Weber, and even Louis Agassiz Fuertes. Compulsive collectors will need to own several copies of Birds. There is a signed, limited, ¾ leather edition and several updated editions. Like all of these books, Roberts provides a snapshot in time of the state’s environment. It is surprising to see what birds are no longer native to this area for example, or to think about unlisted species that have now come to exploit a Minnesota habitat. Herrick’s early work on mammals is wonderful for its very funky illustrations, although educators today prefer Evan B. Hazard’s 1982 Mammals of Minnesota with its beautiful illustrations by Nan Kane. Finally, MacMillan is one of those books you would have to take if you were banished from the state. You can almost smell the various environments he describes.

Arts Orbit is a multisource blog about the local arts scene, featuring both original contributions by Daily Planet writers and entries reprinted from partner blogs and online publications.

Previous entries in this series: • #1 and #2: Theory of the Leisure Class and Giants in the Earth • #3, #4, and #5: Three state histories • #6 and #7: Two beautiful art books