During his five years in the 1730s as rector of St John's parish on the Caribbean island of Nevis, William Smith collected a number of remarkable seashells, which he presented to the Woodwardian Museum of Fossils at the University of Cambridge nine years after his return to England. When the incumbent Woodwardian Professor, Charles Mason, asked Smith for 'some account' of the Nevis shells, Smith wrote him a series of eleven undated letters, published as this book in 1745, containing observations on the island's flora and fauna, and details relating to the neighbouring islands. Mason and Smith...