{"id":534,"date":"2012-04-27T07:13:30","date_gmt":"2012-04-27T06:13:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/potbanks.wordpress.com\/?p=534"},"modified":"2012-04-27T07:13:30","modified_gmt":"2012-04-27T06:13:30","slug":"plots-natural-history-of-staffordshire-digital-facsimile-available","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/spyders\/2012\/04\/27\/plots-natural-history-of-staffordshire-digital-facsimile-available\/","title":{"rendered":"Plot&#8217;s Natural History of Staffordshire &#8211; digital facsimile available"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Interested in reading a copy of Plot&#8217;s <em>Natural History of Staffordshire<\/em> (1686)?  In 2012 there doesn&#8217;t appear to be an online PDF of this public domain work, but there&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/www.midlandshistoricaldata.org\/books_staffs.html\">a digital CD facsimile<\/a> available for a reasonable \u00a312, from Midlands Historical Data.  It&#8217;s not just about birds and beasts and plants, it also has good deal on folklore and customs.  Original copies of the book seem to fetch over \u00a31,500 at auction.<\/p>\n<p><em>Update, November 2017: now available online, <a href=\"https:\/\/quod.lib.umich.edu\/e\/eebo2\/A55155.0001.001?view=toc\">The natural history of Stafford-shire by Robert Plot<\/a> albeit without pictures.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>Update, June 2023: now available online, <a href=\"https:\/\/archive.org\/details\/the-natural-history-of-stafford-shire-by-robert-plot\">at Archive.org<\/a> in hand-keyed HTML.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/jurn.link\/spyders\/oldimages\/natural_history_of_staffordshire.jpg\" alt=\"\" title=\"Natural_History_of_Staffordshire\" width=\"501\" height=\"400\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-535\" \/><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/jurn.link\/spyders\/oldimages\/starstones.gif\" alt=\"\" title=\"starstones\" width=\"203\" height=\"188\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-537\" \/><\/p>\n<blockquote><p>&#8220;Star Stones [seen above] were much discussed by the Oxford academic Robert Plot. Plot dutifully, and rather disdainfully, related how the commonfolk thought Star Stones came to be on Earth: &#8220;&#8230;the Stones [are] some way related to the Celestial Bodies, [and] descend next to such as (by the vulgar at least) are thought to be sent to us from the <em>inferior<\/em> Heaven, to be generated in the Clouds, and discharged thence in the times of Thunder and violent Showers&#8230;&#8221;.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Those who have read <em>The Spyders of Burslem<\/em>, and remember the &#8220;aetherstorm&#8221; and its curious hail may recognise a similarity.  Also a link with one of the themes in the novel.<\/p>\n<p>Also, note the book was &#8220;printed at the Theatre&#8221; in Oxford, which was founded by a man from North Staffordshire.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Interested in reading a copy of Plot&#8217;s Natural History of Staffordshire (1686)? In 2012 there doesn&#8217;t appear to be an online PDF of this public domain work, but there&#8217;s a digital CD facsimile available for a reasonable \u00a312, from Midlands Historical Data. It&#8217;s not just about birds and beasts and plants, it also has good [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-534","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/spyders\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/534","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/spyders\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/spyders\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/spyders\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/spyders\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=534"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/spyders\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/534\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/spyders\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=534"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/spyders\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=534"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/spyders\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=534"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}