A member, and later president, of the Academie des Sciences, French botanist and doctor Rene Louiche Desfontaines (1750 1833) spent the years 1783 5 on an expedition to North Africa. During his time in Tunisia and Algeria, he collected over a thousand plant specimens: more than three hundred genera were new to European naturalists at this time. Having succeeded Le Monnier in the chair of botany at the Jardin du Roi in 1786, Desfontaines helped found the Institut de France following the Revolution and published his two-volume Flora atlantica in Latin in 1798 9. A lavishly illustrated second...

English physician William George Maton (1774 1835) was a polymath who had a special interest in botany: a shell and a parrot were among species named in his honour. His writings on natural history included a catalogue of the plant and animal life around Salisbury, Wiltshire, which was published posthumously in 1843 and is reissued as the second part of this composite work. The first part contains a sketch of Maton's life and work by fellow physician and writer John Ayrton Paris (c. 1785 1856), first presented to the Royal College of Physicians, and subsequently published in 1838. Paris...

John Lindley (1799 1865) was an English botanist and a leading authority on orchids. He attended Norwich Grammar School but was unable to afford university. Lindley's passion for botany helped him into the position of assistant in the herbarium of the naturalist and explorer Sir Joseph Banks. He soon established himself as a botanist of considerable talent, and was elected to the Linnean Society of London at the age of twenty-one. In 1822 he became assistant secretary to the Horticultural Society, and was elected Fellow of the Royal Society in 1828. He was Professor of Botany at University...

Leonard Jenyns (1800 93; he changed his name late in life to benefit from a legacy), was a clergyman, and a respected naturalist and zoologist. A distinguished member of a dozen scientific societies, he was educated at Eton, and then at St John's College, Cambridge, where he graduated in 1822. During his tenure as vicar in Swaffham Bulbeck, he made important contributions to zoology, becoming one of the original members of the Zoological Society of London. In 1831, unwilling to spend years away from his parish responsibilities, he turned down the chance to travel as the naturalist on-board...

This world-famous work was begun by Sir William Jackson Hooker (1785 1865) in 1837, and the ten volumes reissued here were produced under his authorship until 1854, at which point his son, Joseph Dalton Hooker (1817 1911) continued the work of publication. Hooker's own herbarium, or collection of preserved plant specimens, was so extensive that at one point he stored it in one house and lived in another; it was left to the nation on his death. Each volume contains 100 line drawings of plants, and each is accompanied by a full Latin description, with notes in English on habitat and significant...

This world-famous work was begun by Sir William Jackson Hooker (1785 1865) in 1837, and the ten volumes reissued here were produced under his authorship until 1854, at which point his son, Joseph Dalton Hooker (1817 1911) continued the work of publication. Hooker's own herbarium, or collection of preserved plant specimens, was so extensive that at one point he stored it in one house and lived in another; it was left to the nation on his death. Each volume contains 100 line drawings of plants, and each is accompanied by a full Latin description, with notes in English on habitat and significant...

This world-famous work was begun by Sir William Jackson Hooker (1785 1865) in 1837, and the ten volumes reissued here were produced under his authorship until 1854, at which point his son, Joseph Dalton Hooker (1817 1911) continued the work of publication. Hooker's own herbarium, or collection of preserved plant specimens, was so extensive that at one point he stored it in one house and lived in another; it was left to the nation on his death. Each volume contains 100 line drawings of plants, and each is accompanied by a full Latin description, with notes in English on habitat and significant...

Sir Charles James Fox Bunbury (1809 86), the distinguished botanist and geologist, corresponded regularly with Lyell, Horner, Darwin and Hooker among others, and helped them in identifying botanical fossils. He was active in the scientific societies of his time, becoming a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1851. This nine-volume edition of his letters and diaries was published privately by his wife Frances Horner and her sister Katherine Lyell between 1890 and 1893. His copious journal and letters give an unparalleled view of the scientific and cultural society of Victorian England, and of the...

Sir Charles James Fox Bunbury (1809 86), the distinguished botanist and geologist, corresponded regularly with Lyell, Horner, Darwin and Hooker among others, and helped them in identifying botanical fossils. He was active in the scientific societies of his time, becoming a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1851. This nine-volume edition of his letters and diaries was published privately by his wife Frances Horner and her sister Katherine Lyell between 1890 and 1893. His copious journal and letters give an unparalleled view of the scientific and cultural society of Victorian England, and of the...

Sir Charles James Fox Bunbury (1809 86), the distinguished botanist and geologist, corresponded regularly with Lyell, Horner, Darwin and Hooker among others, and helped them in identifying botanical fossils. He was active in the scientific societies of his time, becoming a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1851. This nine-volume edition of his letters and diaries was published privately by his wife Frances Horner and her sister Katherine Lyell between 1890 and 1893. His copious journal and letters give an unparalleled view of the scientific and cultural society of Victorian England, and of the...