Small in scale but quite a treasure I think, which I like an extra lot for the fact that the sea moss specimens were collected in the whaling capital of New Bedford, MA, right around the time (c. 1850) that Melville was writing Moby Dick, which was inspired by it. It appears to me that this album, with shell-shaped leather cover and tissue paper separating each page, has barely been opened since it was created; each of its 32 specimens is in excellent condition. There is one handwritten page at either end, one of which is readable the other not so much; the legible one features a poem in the tiniest of handwritten cursive (I had to shoot under magnification to read it) as follows: “Not fawned by winds / Of a summer parterre / When gales are but sighs / Of an evening air / Our delicate, fragile / And exquisite forms / Are rocked by the billows /  And nursed by the storms.  Sea mosses from New Bedford.” A lovely and very special feeling thing.

2 13/16" x 2 3/4"; visible page size is 2 5/8" x 2 1/8". All in excellent condition, with every sample as lovely as the next. Pages documents are representative of all with a vert nice variety of different types of kelp.