versity Press, ), , , (on Galveston), and esp. Raymond Arsenault, ‘‘The Public
Storm: Hurricanes and the State in Twentieth-Century America,’’ inParadise Lost? The
Environmental History of Florida, ed. Jack E. Davis and Raymond Arsenault (Gainesville:
University Press of Florida, ), –.
. A pleasurable introduction to the St. Johns is Bill Belleville,River of Lakes: A Jour-
ney on Florida’s St. Johns River(Athens: University of Georgia Press, ).
. William Bartram,Travels through North and South Carolina,Georgia, East and West
Florida(Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, ; facsimile of the London
edition), . Bartram’s St. Johns trip consumes the following pages; the travels in
Alachua Indian country, –; his encounters with alligators, –; rattlesnakes,
–. For historical, scientific, and literary context, see Thomas P. Slaughter,The
Natures of John and William Bartram(New York: Knopf, ). This prologue features
three St. Johns voyagers—Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings and Gail Fishman, in addition to
Bartram—but readers will understand that the St. Johns is famously traveled and writ-
ten about. See, e.g., Charles E. Bennett,Twelve on the River St. Johns( Jacksonville: Uni-
versity of North Florida, ), and Belleville,River of Lakes, in addition to citations of
Rawlings and Fishman below.
. Audubon’s binge shooting and Cooper’s fiction are conveniently excerpted in
Carolyn Merchant, ed.,Major Problems in American Environmental History(Lexington,
Mass.: D. C. Heath, ), –. On nature-slaughter as endemic to frontierspeople,
see Alan Taylor, ‘‘ ‘Wasty Ways’: Stories of American Settlement,’’Environmental History
( July ): –; on southern white men’s barbarism into the twentieth century,
see Ted Ownby,Subduing Satan: Religion, Recreation, and Manhood in the Rural South,
–(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, ), esp. –, –.
. Mikko Saikku, ‘‘The Extinction of the Carolina Parakeet,’’Environmental History
Review (Fall ): –. The association of apples with brandy in the nineteenth-
century Midwest is celebrated in Michael Pollan’s essay ‘‘Johnny Appleseed’’ inThe
Botany of Desire: A Plant’s-Eye View of the World(New York: Random House, ), –.
. See James Gorman, ‘‘Deep in the Swamp, an ‘Extinct’ Woodpecker Lives,’’New
York Times, April . As theTimesand other media reported, however, by mid-
summer some experts judged the evidence of the sighting insubstantial.
. In addition to Bartram, see John McPhee,Oranges(New York: Noonday Press,
).
. SeeCross Creek’s essay on snakes, ‘‘The Ancient Enmity,’’ –. Other incidents
appear in theSelected Letters.
. For the correction of ‘‘trout’’ with large-mouth bass, see Francis Harper, ed.,
The Travels of William Bartram: Naturalist’s Edition(; Athens: University of Georgia
Press, ), .
. Gail Fishman,Journeys through Paradise: Pioneering Naturalists in the Southeast
(Gainesville: University Press of Florida, ), provides a useful brief overview of Flori-
da’s alligator population, –, –.New York TimesPhoto Archive offered copies of
the Ruth ‘‘Bags a ’Gator, Florida ’’ photo in advertisements in the paper—e.g., July
–