Published here for the first time are the original watercolours from which Catesby prepared the etchings which accompanied his published volumes. Having been stored away from the light between the pages of a unique copy of the book in the Royal Library at Windsor, which King George III bought in 1768, they are wonderfully fresh, and communicate all the enthusiasm of the pioneer naturalist amazed by colours and variety of new species of birds, fish, mammals, reptiles, insects and plants he was documenting (some of them now extinct).