Naturalist, entomologist, ornithologist and conchologist, Swainson in his youth was a clerk in the Customs House in London, transferred to Malta, and then to Sicily where he lived eight years. His sojourn in the last place synchronized with Rafinesque's stay in Sicily where they shared a mutual interest in collecting plants and animals. Returning to England in 1815, he continued his avocation, publishing in various fields of Zoology. A corresponding member of the Academy from 1830, he sent reprints to this library; one such has a presentation by the author. Five original watercolors, four of shells (Murex, Phos, Lambis and two unidentified) and one of a flowering plant, drawn by Swainson, mounted as a single plate, is used as a frontispiece to his Exotic conchology, 1841.