The tension in American Attitudes. 
How do we comprehend the nature of the seashore from the perspective of the naturalists?
Siry "The Legacy of the Seashore Naturalists" from Marshes of the Ocean Shore.,
"There is at all times and all places a fascination in the seashore"
versus
"completed an otherwise, 'unfinished' landscape."
p. 34
Clarence Glacken, Traces on the Rhodian Shore.
influences | conflicting motives | naturalist is? | people | painting example | conclusions
Influences on American coastal development:
Portrait of the New England shore
Duality of motives
Tidelands as sovereign land, commons, values of
Naturalists describe the coastal areas as scientific and scenic
influences | conflicting motives | naturalist is? | people | painting example | conclusions
Dual motives: dominant attitude versus the naturalist's fascination
coastal wetlands reclaim retain intent drain and farm flood and preserve writers Thomas Jefferson William Bartram statesman Albert Gallatin Samuel Latham Mitchell advocates & artists E. I. du Pont John James Audubon influences | conflicting motives | naturalist is? | people | painting example | conclusions
Naturalist, one who studies nature, such as Gilbert White, John and William Bartram, Charles Darwin, or Samuel L. Mitchell by collecting specimens of plants, animals and rocks (vegetal, animal and the mineral features) from various places. They engaged in nature study to better understand what sorts of organisms lived where and how they survived amidst the changing conditions that affected the water, energy, air or landscape in any terrain or seashore. Sometimes called a practitioner of natural history, a collector of specimens to study or send back to expert naturalists such as Carl von Linne, the great taxonomist in Stockholm, Sweden. A naturalist Florida for example was Archie Carr.
influences | conflicting motives | naturalist is? | people | painting example | conclusions
The terror of the seas depicted by John Singleton Copley, of a shark attack in Havana harbor.
Those who early recognized that there was something hidden in nature that once revealed may be of great value.
Henry David Thoreau, naturalist, Cape Cod recognized, pollution, ecology and germination of different seeds from forest trees
Edmund Ruffin, natural historian, remarked on forestry, rice plantations, seashore succession along sand dunes.
Martin Johnson Heade, artist who painted the marshlands of New England.
Sydney Lanier, poet who wrote for the railways about the beauty of nature, thereby attracting visitors to the South after the Civil War. Wrote about the Sea Island marshes of south Georgia.
"Changes in transportation altered the role of estuaries from a nexus in colonial times to a terminus in modern times."
p. 36.
influences | conflicting motives | naturalist is? | people | painting example | conclusions
"To wade sometimes in the marshes where bittern and the meadow hen lurk. . . where only some wilder and more solitary fowl builds her nest."
HDT. pp. 56-57.
The great contributions of the naturalists to the advancement of natural history and study of the seashore was to make the essential biological creatures and the native features of rivers, marshes, coastal promontories and forests visible as a single unit.
As such the artistry of Audubon made fish
and birds an emblem of the early nation's maritime wealth and cultural identity.
Much like the study of the fish, forests, fowl and vegetation of the shore, the poetry, and the artistry of the seashore brought to the attention of the Republic the unsurpassed scenic and utilitarian values of coastal America and its tidal seas.
influences | conflicting motives | naturalist is? | people | painting example | commerce
Date: March 31 2008
