Thomas Meehan was an Englishman, trained at Kew, who moved to Germantown
Pennsylvania in 1853, where he spent the rest of his life running a nursery and
editing various periodicals. He was the Editor of The Gardener's Monthly.Together
with well known artist-printer Louis Prang, they published The Native Flowers
and Ferns of the United States in 1878.This is Meehan's masterwork, and one
of the leading authorities on ferns in America. It is also a notable 19th
century American color plate book, issued by Louis Prang of Boston, the leading
chromolithographer of the period.TAXONOMIC LITERATURE 5783. McGRATH, pp145-46.
BENNRTT, p.75.
"Mr. Prang was the first to apply…the designation of 'chromos' to this
type of colored lithograph (Oxford English Dictionary, quoting Printing
Times, London Jan 15, 1875). In 1876 he established a model printing
establishment in Roxbury, where, in addition to reproducing his
"chromos," he employed the printing craft as a subsidiary to art in
various other ways. He devised appropriately decorated Christmas cards which he
first sold in England and then in 1875 put on the American market. DICTIONARY OF
AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY p.165.
In his PREFACE TO SERIES II which was produced two years after the first series
Meehan wrote:" Not the least among the author's gratifications is the
complimentary manner in which the work has been received by his botanical
associates. It was a task rarely attempted, to bring exact botanical knowledge
to a level with popular comprehension -to give it a place among a great variety
of the more cultivated branches of knowledge,-and, above all, to accommodate
such a work to the popular purse. That this could be successfully accomplished
the author had the courage to hope, but he was scarcely prepared for the
cordiality with which eminent men of science have received this people's work as
an acceptable contribution to scientific literature. Amongst these the author
has especially to make his acknowledgments to Professor Asa Gray, who in "
Silliman's Journal of the Arts and Sciences' '' for May, 1879, compares the
drawings not unfavorably with those of Mr. Sprague, who for many years has been
at the head of botanical drawing in this country. Considering the very low price
at which this work is supplied, the fact that Professor Gray should have been
led to compare it with the best and most expensive botanical work in our
country, must be accepted as very high praise."THOMAS MEEHAN. Germantown,
Philadelphia, May, 1879
Louis Prang was well known as an artist and his lithographs are highly
collectable .
SERIES ONE
- VOLUMES I and II - 1879
SERIES TWO - VOLUMES III and IV -
1880
