The Rendell Rhoades Crayfish Collection
The Rhoades Collection is an exhaustive accumulation of scientific literature, spanning four centuries, on the taxonomy and culture of the crayfish (the scientific, as opposed to culinary, spelling of crawfish). It was the working collection of noted zoologist and aquaculture pioneer Rendell Rhoades (1914-1975), a fisheries scientist for the Ohio Division of Wildlife, curator of collections at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History, and from 1972 until his death chair of the biology department at Ashland College in Ohio.
Rhoades collected books that made any reference to crayfish, and the geographic focus of the collection is not restricted to Louisiana. Several rare and important early works on natural history are included. Among these are a 1548 edition of the works of Pliny, Gesner’s edition of Ovid’s Halieutica (1556), Sir Francis Bacon’s Sylva Sylvarum (1651), a Dutch edition of John Jonston’s Historiae Naturalis (1660), Juan Eusebio Nieremberg’s Curiosa y Oculta Filosofia (1649), and the Phytognomonica of Giambattista della Porta (1650). The collection also contains a large number of offprints of scholarly articles on crayfish and other crustaceans.
For additional information about the Rhoades Crayfish Collection call Elaine Smyth at (225) 578-6552 (esmyth@lsu.edu).
