Nature preserved

An illustration of the great horned owl is shown from a first volume of John James Audubon’s The Birds of America. Each of this book’s five volumes contains approximately 100 hand-colored illustrations of birds found in the United States. Only 120 complete sets are known to exist in the world. The Rare Books Department’s first edition is on permanent display on the 6th floor of Howard-Tilton Memorial Library, and the page of the current volume is turned each week on Wednesday morning.