Charles Waterton was a naturalist who spent several years in the first three decades of the nineteenth century travelling in the Americas. Born to a prominent Roman Catholic family in Yorkshire (his father was descended from Sir Thomas More), in 1804, Waterton travelled to Demerara (now part of Guyana) to manage his brother Christopher’s plantations. On the abolition of slavery in the 1830s, the Waterton family is recorded as having enslaved 300 people in Demerara. Relinquishing control of the plantations in 1812, Charles soon set about exploring the country.

A passionate ornithologist, he would return to the region in 1816 and again in 1820 to collect further examples of South American birdlife. He brought these back to his home at Walton Hall where they were arranged around the main staircase. As a skilled taxidermist, he also devised a novel method that preserved the specimens without the need of stuffing. He taught the method to his assistant, John Edmonston, a former slave. Edmonston would go on to teach it to Charles Darwin.

In 1824, inspired by Alexander Wilson’s American Ornithology, Waterton travelled to the United States and ventured through the country and into Canada before visiting the West Indies and Demerara. The tour took a year and he observed hundreds of different species.

This book, published on his return to Britain in 1825, contains accounts of each of these travels as well as providing information on his unique preservation method. The Royal Library's copy is of the second edition, published in 1828.