Naturalists at Sea

Naturalists at Sea
Author: Glyn Williams
Publisher: Yale University Press
Total Pages: 329
Release: 2013-10-22
Genre: Science
ISBN: 030018073X

DIVDIVTales of the intrepid early naturalists who set sail on dangerous voyages of discovery in the vast, unknown Pacific/div/div

Ulendo

Ulendo
Author: Archie Carr
Publisher:
Total Pages: 303
Release: 1964
Genre: Nature
ISBN: 9780813011790

From reviews of the first edition "The journey . . . is really through Archie Carr's mind, where it is easy to move from Africa to Florida or Central America, or from mechanical dredges to prehistoric monsters. The result is always interesting because Mr. Carr has a rare ability to look at the world freshly."--Marston Bates, New York Times "The sights to which he calls our attention . . . the mile-high mushroom swarms of kungu flies of Lake Nyasa, the buzzards' ready manipulation of whirlwinds . . . are merely the chords from which, with the toughness of science and the insight of art, he improvises a brilliant opera of speculations about the evolution of animal adaptive behavior."--The New Yorker In the timeless voice of a classic, Ulendo speaks to readers today with even more force and elegance than it did on its first publication in 1954. Written by Florida's preeminent nature writer, this memoir describes the African journey--the "ulendo," as they say in Malawi--of Archie Carr, who spent several summers in Africa on official business to study animal-borne diseases and sea turtle habitats. His secret aim, he wrote, was "to see my dream of Africa unfold." Revealed here in images of pythons, fly spouts, and curious men, his dream became a passion to preserve the African wilderness. "I had thought of Africa as inexhaustible," he wrote in the preface. "Now, however, I am not able to get rid of the thought of its waning. It comes repeatedly into the Ulendo story, and has modified somewhat the tone of blithe irresponsibility I was aiming for." Every few days during his trips he wrote letters to his wife and five children at home in Florida, and these personal asides, full of devotion to his family and enthusiasm for his adventure, are published for the first time in this new paperback edition. "Of course it was a lonely summer," Marjorie Carr writes in her prologue to the 1952 correspondence. "Archie's letters, written on little thin airmail stationery, were anxiously awaited and read and reread." With the reappearance of this collector's treasure, a new generation has the opportunity to experience the adventures and passions of this eloquent naturalist. Archie Carr, Jr. (1909-87), world-renowned sea turtle expert, was the University of Florida's first graduate research professor. Among his many books are The Windward Road (UPF, 1979), High Jungles and Low (UPF, 1992), So Excellent a Fishe, and several volumes for the Life Nature Library. In addition to countless awards for scientific work, Carr received the O. Henry Memorial Award, the John Burroughs Medal, and the first Hal Borland Award of the National Audubon Society for his writing.

The Naturalists

The Naturalists
Author: Stephen R. Bown
Publisher: Barnes & Noble Publishing
Total Pages: 284
Release: 2002
Genre: Natural history
ISBN: 9780760737644

This volume provides portraits of the early naturalists who explored the New World in the pre-Darwinian Age. The late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries in Europe and America saw the dawn of a golden age of science in which society energetically sought to quantify, categorize, and rationally explain the world. The author profiles nine important naturalists -- both dedicated professionals and amateurs -- who set off for what is now North and South America to discover and document the natural wonders they found there. Their stories of adventure are punctuated with hardship, both in finding the financing to get their ventures off the ground, and the vagaries of the elements they encountered in the New World. Despite the odds, these explorers, either traveling with artists, or as artists themselves, chronicled their adventures in both words and pictures, providing a unique portrait of the natural world in North, South, and Central America before parts of it became widely settled.

Naturalists in the Field

Naturalists in the Field
Author:
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 1039
Release: 2018-04-24
Genre: Science
ISBN: 9004323848

Interposed between the natural world in all its diversity and the edited form in which we encounter it in literature, imagery and the museum, lie the multiple practices of the naturalists in selecting, recording and preserving the specimens from which our world view is to be reconstituted. The factors that weigh at every stage are here dissected, analysed and set within a historical narrative that spans more than five centuries. During that era, every aspect evolved and changed, as engagement with nature moved from a speculative pursuit heavily influenced by classical scholarship to a systematic science, drawing on advanced theory and technology. Far from being neutrally objective, the process of representing nature is shown as fraught with constraint and compromise. With a Foreword by Sir David Attenborough Contributors are: Marie Addyman, Peter Barnard, Paul D. Brinkman, Ian Convery, Peter Davis, Felix Driver, Florike Egmond, Annemarie Jordan Gschwend, Geoff Hancock, Stephen Harris, Hanna Hodacs, Stuart Houston, Dominik Huenniger, Rob Huxley, Charlie Jarvis, Malgosia Nowak-Kemp, Shepard Krech III, Mark Lawley, Arthur Lucas, Marco Masseti, Geoff Moore, Pat Morris, Charles Nelson, Robert Peck, Helen Scales, Han F. Vermeulen, and Glyn Williams.