Download or read book Naturalists in Paradise written by John Hemming and published by National Geographic Books. This book was released on 2015-03-10 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The thrilling stories of the three pioneering English naturalists’ explorations and discoveries in the world’s richest ecosystem One hundred and fifty years ago, the young naturalists Alfred Wallace, Henry Walter Bates, and Richard Spruce were on a journey. Their destination, Amazonia—the world’s largest tropical forest with the greatest river system and richest ecosystem—was then an almost-undiscovered environment to Western explorers and scientists. In Naturalists in Paradise, Amazon expert John Hemming weaves the riveting stories of these three men’s experiences in the Amazon and assesses their valuable research that drastically changed our conception of the natural world. Each of the three naturalists is famous for a particular discovery: Wallace is credited, along with Charles Darwin, for developing the theory of evolution; Bates uncovered the phenomenon of protective mimicry among insects; and Spruce transported the quinine-bearing Cinchona tree to India, saving countless lives from malaria. Drawing on the letters and books of the three naturalists, Hemming reaches beyond the well-known narratives, offering unrivaled insight into the often lawless frontier life in South America as seen through the lives of the great pioneers of modern disciplines: anthropology, tribal linguistics, archaeology, and every branch of natural science.
Download or read book Paradise Found written by Steve Nicholls and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2009-08-01 with total page 535 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first Europeans to set foot on North America stood in awe of the natural abundance before them. The skies were filled with birds, seas and rivers teemed with fish, and the forests and grasslands were a hunter’s dream, with populations of game too abundant and diverse to even fathom. It’s no wonder these first settlers thought they had discovered a paradise of sorts. Fortunately for us, they left a legacy of copious records documenting what they saw, and these observations make it possible to craft a far more detailed evocation of North America before its settlement than any other place on the planet. Here Steve Nicholls brings this spectacular environment back to vivid life, demonstrating with both historical narrative and scientific inquiry just what an amazing place North America was and how it looked when the explorers first found it. The story of the continent’s colonization forms a backdrop to its natural history, which Nicholls explores in chapters on the North Atlantic, the East Coast, the Subtropical Caribbean, the West Coast, Baja California, and the Great Plains. Seamlessly blending firsthand accounts from centuries past with the findings of scientists today, Nicholls also introduces us to a myriad cast of characters who have chronicled the changing landscape, from pre–Revolutionary era settlers to researchers whom he has met in the field. A director and writer of Emmy Award–winning wildlife documentaries for the Smithsonian Channel, Animal Planet, National Geographic, and PBS, Nicholls deploys a cinematic flair for capturing nature at its most mesmerizing throughout. But Paradise Found is much more than a celebration of what once was: it is also a reminder of how much we have lost along the way and an urgent call to action so future generations are more responsible stewards of the world around them. The result is popular science of the highest order: a book as remarkable as the landscape it recreates and as inspired as the men and women who discovered it.
Download or read book Journeys Through Paradise written by Gail Fishman and published by . This book was released on 2017 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Following the original steps of pioneering naturalists, Gail Fishman profiles thirteen men who explored North America's southeastern wilderness between 1715 and the 1940s, including John James Audubon, Mark Catesby, John and William Bartram, John Muir, and Alvan Wentworth Chapman. The book is also Fishman's personal travelogue as she experiences the landscape through their eyes and describes the changes that have occurred along the region's trails and streams.
Download or read book Wings of Paradise written by Charlie Hohorst, Jr. and published by . This book was released on 2009-09 with total page 156 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Wings of Paradise presents a spectacular collection of 150 photographs of the birds of Louisiana's wetlands. The images portray dozens of different species of shore birds, raptors, woodland songbirds, migratory ducks and geese engaged in a variety of activities -- swooping and skimming to soaring, preening, nesting, romancing, arguing and catching prey. Noted food writer Marcelle Bienvenu complements the photographic feast by reflecting on South Louisiana's cherished hunting rituals and offering twenty-four of her favorite duck and goose recipes. Wings of Paradise will inform and delight birders, naturalists, conservationists, sportsmen -- everyone who appreciates the beauty of nature and South Louisiana.
Download or read book A Naturalist in the Amazon written by Henry Walter Bates and published by Smithsonian Institution. This book was released on 2020-04-14 with total page 82 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Beautifully presented facsimile reproductions of the drawings and notes of pioneering entomologist Henry Walter Bates documenting his 11-year-long travels in the Amazon in the mid-1850s. This charming book showcases the two journals produced by entomologist Henry Walter Bates during his groundbreaking travels and discoveries in the Amazon from 1848 to 1859, on which his classic work The Naturalist on the River Amazon, was based. It includes facsimile reproductions of stunning illustrated pages taken from his Amazon journals, as well as an essay describing his travels. The journals reveal how a self-taught naturalist and butterfly enthusiast had a profound impact on the science of evolution. Bates, a trusted companion of Alfred Russel Wallace, traveled with him to the Amazon in 1848. There he became fascinated by close similarities in appearance between unrelated butterflies, and discovered a scientific phenomenon we now refer to as Batesian mimicry: species that are highly desirable to predators began evolving to look more like other, more toxic species in order to avoid predation. Bates spent a total of 11 years in the Amazon; when he returned to England, he had collected, by his own estimate, some 14,000 species of insects, of which no less than 8,000 were previously unknown. This beautiful book offers valuable new insight into the scientific implications and findings of Henry Walter Bates's rich and fruitful time in the Amazon, and it is the ideal book for anyone interested in science, scientific history, and science illustrations.
Download or read book A Naturalist in Florida written by Archie Carr and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 1996-09-01 with total page 308 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Archie Carr (1909-1987), the eminent naturalist, writer, and conservationist, was particularly entranced by the wildlife and ecosystems of Florida, where he lived for more than 50 years. This book - which includes some of his essays - is full of details and anecdotes about the flora, fauna, and humans that have inhabited Florida's colourful landscape.
Download or read book Nature written by Sir Norman Lockyer and published by . This book was released on 1876 with total page 612 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Birds of Paradise written by Clifford B. Frith and published by . This book was released on 2010 with total page 370 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Authoritative comprehensive popular work on all birds of paradise. Superb photography complemented by exquisite fine art of the 16th to 21st centuries. Numerous collectable artefacts of the birds are also illustrated. Attractive to natural history, bird, wildlife, fine art/artefacts & history interests. 2010, 282 x 215 mm, 370 pp, 350 colour & 120 monochrome illustrations.
Download or read book Birds of Paradise written by Clifford B. Frith and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 1998-07-09 with total page 676 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Birds of paradise have long played a central part in human mythologies and captured the imagination of collectors, scientists, and naturalists - and fashion designers. Birds of Paradise provides the first comprehensive, up-to-date, and scientifically accurate overview of the behaviour, biology, ecology, biogeography, and history of the most ornate and dramatic group of birds on earth. The book is illustrated by 12 superb, specially commissioned colour plates including all 42 species of birds of paradise, original line drawings of many behaviours never before recorded, maps, graphs, sonograms, and photographs. This stunning book will delight ornithologists and naturalists the world over.
Download or read book Drawn From Paradise The Discovery Art and Natural History of the Birds of Paradise written by Sir David Attenborough and published by HarperCollins UK. This book was released on 2012-08-30 with total page 443 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Drawn from Paradise is David Attenborough’s journey through the cultural history of the birds of paradise, one of the most exquisite and extravagant, colourful and intriguing families of birds.
Download or read book Vanishing Paradise written by Elizabeth C. Childs and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2013-05-18 with total page 358 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Vanishing paradise" offers a fresh take on the modernist primitivism of the French painter Paul Gauguin, the exoticism of the American John LaFarge, and the elite tourism of the American writer Henry Adams. Childs explores how these artists wrestled with the elusiveness of paradise and portrayed colonial Tahiti in ways both mythic and modern.
Download or read book Birds of Paradise written by Tim Laman and published by National Geographic Books. This book was released on 2012 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this dazzling photo essay, Laman and Scholes present gorgeous full-color photographs of all 39 species of the Birds of Paradise that highlight their unique and extraordinary plumage and mating behavior.
Download or read book The Paradise of All These Parts written by John Mitchell and published by Beacon Press. This book was released on 2009-06-01 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How much does the current landscape of Boston, Massachusetts, resemble the place that Captain John Smith referred to in 1614 as "the Paradise of all these parts"? John Hanson Mitchell explores a variety of habitats as he ranges outward from the core of the peninsula where the Puritans first settled to the ancient rim of the Boston Basin, within which the modern city now lies. Endlessly readable and full of personality, The Paradise of All These Parts offers Boston visitors and residents alike a whole new perspective on one of America's oldest cities.
Download or read book Tree of Rivers The Story of the Amazon written by John Hemming and published by Thames & Hudson. This book was released on 2009-11-30 with total page 522 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “In his long career of exploration and scholarship, Hemming has become a powerful advocate for the Amazon.”—The New York Times, John Hemming Amazonia is one of the most magnificent habitats on earth. Containing the world’s largest river, with more water and a broader basin than any other, it hosts a great expanse of tropical rain forest, home to the planet’s most luxuriant biological diversity. The human beings who settled in the region 10,000 years ago learned to live well with its bounty of fish, game, and vegetation. It was not until 1500 that Europeans first saw the Amazon, and, unsurprisingly, the rain forest’s unique environment has attracted larger-than-life personalities through the centuries. John Hemming recalls the adventures and misadventures of intrepid explorers, fervent Jesuit ecclesiastics, and greedy rubber barons who enslaved thousands of Indians in the relentless quest for profit. He also tells of nineteenth-century botanists, fearless advocates for Indian rights, and the archaeologists and anthropologists who have uncovered the secrets of the Amazon’s earliest settlers. Hemming discusses the current threat to Amazonia as forests are destroyed to feed the world’s appetite for timber, beef, and soybeans, and he vividly describes the passionate struggles taking place in order to utilize, protect, and understand the Amazon.
Download or read book Naturalist written by Edward O. Wilson and published by Island Press. This book was released on 2006-04-24 with total page 444 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Edward O. Wilson -- University Professor at Harvard, winner of two Pulitzer prizes, eloquent champion of biodiversity -- is arguably one of the most important thinkers of the twentieth century. His career represents both a blueprint and a challenge to those who seek to explore the frontiers of scientific understanding. Yet, until now, little has been told of his life and of the important events that have shaped his thought.In Naturalist, Wilson describes for the first time both his growth as a scientist and the evolution of the science he has helped define. He traces the trajectory of his life -- from a childhood spent exploring the Gulf Coast of Alabama and Florida to life as a tenured professor at Harvard -- detailing how his youthful fascination with nature blossomed into a lifelong calling. He recounts with drama and wit the adventures of his days as a student at the University of Alabama and his four decades at Harvard University, where he has achieved renown as both teacher and researcher.As the narrative of Wilson's life unfolds, the reader is treated to an inside look at the origin and development of ideas that guide today's biological research. Theories that are now widely accepted in the scientific world were once untested hypotheses emerging from one mans's broad-gauged studies. Throughout Naturalist, we see Wilson's mind and energies constantly striving to help establish many of the central principles of the field of evolutionary biology.The story of Wilson's life provides fascinating insights into the making of a scientist, and a valuable look at some of the most thought-provoking ideas of our time.
Download or read book The Naturalists written by Stephen R. Bown and published by Barnes & Noble Publishing. This book was released on 2002 with total page 284 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book Nature written by and published by . This book was released on 1876 with total page 844 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
