Holzworth, John. M [C. Hart Merriam] [Sterling Bunnell]

The Wild Grizzlies of Alaska (inscribed by C. Hart Merriam]

NY: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1930. First edition. Hardcover. A non-authorial association copy, inscribed in the year of publication on front free endpaper by C. Hart Merriam in a small script: "Dear Doctor Bunnell, During the last two or three years, John Holzworth has several times visited me at my Washington home, thrilling me with his accounts and photographs of his close-ups with the Big Bears of Admiralty Island, Alaska. I trust his story and picture will prove of equal interest to you and Mrs. Bunnell. C. Hart Merriam, Lagunitas, Calif., October 1930." The recipient is Sterling Bunnell of San Francisco, an influential physician and the "founding father of hand surgery" (see this biography). He also was an outdoorsman of Gold Rush stock; his cousin helped name Yosemite, and he himself crashed his plane in Yosemite. There are letters between Merriam and Bunnell in Merriam's archive. Best known as an ornithologist, mammalogist ("the father of mammalogy"), and the head of the US Biological Survey, C Hart Merriam "stunned his colleagues" later in his career by leaving mammalogy behind to chronicle disappearing indigenous cultures in California though he had no formal training in ethnography; the door was opened to this work when in his surveys of animals he'd come to rely on indigenous informants and began to learn Native languages. Holzworth's book is one of the first on grizzlies and has the long subtitle "A story of the grizzly and the brown bears of Alaska, their habits, manners and characteristics, together with notes on mountain sheep, caribou, collected by the author for the united state biological survey." He made his first foray to Alaska in 1923 for the Biological Survey and returned for the New York Biological Survey, bringing back specimens of bears. He was influential in first proposing an Admiralty Island National Monument to Theodore Roosevelt and it was finally made a National Monument by Jimmy Carter in 1978. With a foreword by William T. Hornaday and 84 photographs by Holzworth. Per the index, Merriam is mentioned on seven pages, including twice in the preface: "I have been urged by many, including such men as Dr. Nelson and Dr. Merriam, each of whom was Chief of the United States Biological Survey for many years" (xi); "I am deeply grateful to Dr. C. Hart Merriam who read the entire manuscript." Blue cloth boards with mustard stamped lettering and bear illustration. Very good with a lean to spine and some bumping to corners and spine ends, slight sunning to spine. Lacking the dust jacket. Unusual for being signed by Merriam, who was one of the country's most important mammalogists. A nice associational and all. Very good. Item #2091

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