Lot Description
Isabella Sinclair (1842-1900)
Indigenous Flowers of the Hawaiian Islands. London: Sampson, Low, Marston, Searle & Rivington, 1885. 2° (367 x 273mm). 44 chromolithographic plates, printed by Leighton Brothers after Mrs. Sinclair, 7 with green-tinted backgrounds, 2 within green tinted-borders. (Occasional small marginal tears, light soiling to plates 39 and 44.) Original yellow/brown cloth, upper cover blocked in gilt with title and representation of an hibiscus, gilt edges (neatly rebacked with red/brown morocco lettering-piece, light soiling to covers, corners rubbed). Provenance: A.Hoffnung ('His Hawaiian Majesty's Chargé d'Affaires', presentation inscription, on mounted calling-card, to:) -- Mrs R.F. Synge.
A SIGNIFICANT CONTRIBUTION TO THE STUDY OF THE INDIGENOUS FLORA AND SYLVA OF HAWAII. The author, who lived at Makaweli, Kauai, gives the native names for each plant depicted together with a short physical description, a note of its preferred habitat and any uses to which the plant was put. Sir Joseph Hooker provided the correct botanical binomials. The author's introduction, in which she notes with alarm the loss of habitat, will strike a familar chord to anyone concerned with conservation and bio-diversity: 'The Hawaiian Islands have never been celebrated for the beauty of their flora. Indeed, to a stranger, they almost seem destitute of indigenous flowers. But when one comes to search, on hill and plain, sea-coast and cloud-enveloped mountain, it is astonishing the number and variety that are to be found. The islands... are rich in flowering trees, shrubs, and vines... The Hawaiian flora seems... to grow in an easy careless way, which, though pleasingly artistic, and well adapted to what may be termed the natural state of the islands, will not long survive the invasion of foreign plants, and changed conditions. Forest fires, animals, and agriculture, have so changed the islands, within the last fifty or sixty years, that one can now travel for miles, in some districts, without finding a single indigenous plant; the ground being wholly taken possession of by weeds, shrubs, and grasses, imported from various countries'. Nissen BBI 1848.
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