The Survey of Western Palestine was carried out under the auspices of the Palestine Exploration Fund between 1871 and 1877, and its results were published in a series of books between 1882 and 1888. This volume was written by H. B. Tristram (1822 1906), the naturalist, geologist and Anglican priest, whose The Land of Israel is also reissued in this series. Although he declined a bishopric in Jerusalem, he made four separate trips to Palestine in order to compile this catalogue of its flora and fauna. Including all native vertebrates, molluscs and plants known at the time, the work was first...

British palaeontologist Thomas Davidson (1817 85) was born in Edinburgh and began his studies at the city's university. Encouraged by German palaeontologist Leopold von Buch, he began to study brachiopod fossils at the age of twenty, and he quickly became the undisputed authority. He was elected fellow of the Geological Society of London in 1852, receiving the Wollaston medal in 1865. He became a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1857. Published between 1850 and 1886, this six-volume work became the definitive reference text on the subject. It includes more than two hundred hand-drawn plates and...

When she was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1946, Agnes Arber (1879 1960) was one of only three women to have been admitted into the institution. Arber conducted research that focused mainly on the morphology of flowering plants, but her work is characterised by its explorations of historical botany and evolution. First published in 1950, this book widens the scope of morphology into a study of all aspects of form across the whole chronology of botany. Arber begins with Aristotle and investigates the work of early modern botanists like Bacon and Goethe, before examining the effects...

James Shirley Hibberd (1825 90) was a journalist and writer on gardening, whose popular works had great influence on middle-class taste. Although not a trained horticulturalist, his many books were based on practical experience. He developed a succession of gardens in North London, concentrating on particular types of plants, and his books reflected this work, with this book of 1864 and The Fern Garden (1869) being particularly successful. He also wrote on garden design, flower arrangement, garden furniture and architecture, and his Rustic Adornments of 1856 (reissued in this series, together...

Distinguished plant ecologist A. G. Tansley (1871 1955) is widely considered to be the father of British ecology. He was one of the founding members of the British Ecological Society and during his career he edited two important journals on the subject: The New Phytologist and the Journal of Ecology. He was also part of a committee formed in 1904 to survey systematically the vegetation of the British Isles. This book, edited by Tansley and first published in 1911, is the result of that survey. It contains contributions by leading botanists of the early twentieth century, and contains detailed...

Georges Cuvier (1769 1832), made a peer of France in 1819 in recognition of his work, was perhaps the most important European scientist of his day. His most famous work, Le Regne Animal, was published in French in 1817; Edward Griffith (1790 1858), a solicitor and amateur naturalist, embarked on in 1824, with a team of colleagues, an English version which resulted in this illustrated sixteen-volume edition with additional material, published between 1827 and 1835. Cuvier was the first biologist to compare the anatomy of fossil animals with living species, and he named the now familiar...

Georges Cuvier (1769 1832), made a peer of France in 1819 in recognition of his work, was perhaps the most important European scientist of his day. His most famous work, Le Regne Animal, was published in French in 1817; Edward Griffith (1790 1858), a solicitor and amateur naturalist, embarked on in 1824, with a team of colleagues, an English version which resulted in this illustrated sixteen-volume edition with additional material, published between 1827 and 1835. Cuvier was the first biologist to compare the anatomy of fossil animals with living species, and he named the now familiar...

Georges Cuvier (1769 1832), made a peer of France in 1819 in recognition of his work, was perhaps the most important European scientist of his day. His most famous work, Le Regne Animal, was published in French in 1817; Edward Griffith (1790 1858), a solicitor and amateur naturalist, embarked on in 1824, with a team of colleagues, an English version which resulted in this illustrated sixteen-volume edition with additional material, published between 1827 and 1835. Cuvier was the first biologist to compare the anatomy of fossil animals with living species, and he named the now familiar...

First published in 1880, this study of the biology and geography of islands investigates some of the most pressing questions of nineteenth-century natural science. Why do countries as far-flung as Britain and Japan share similar flora and fauna when those of neighbouring islands in Malaysia are utterly unalike? What is the origin of life in New Zealand? And why do the geological formations of Scotland and Wales appear to be the result of glaciers when those countries lie in the temperate zone? Dismissing popular theories of submerged continents and 'special creation', Alfred Russel Wallace...

French zoologist and naturalist Georges Cuvier (1769 1832), one of the most eminent scientific figures of the early nineteenth century, is best known for laying the foundations of comparative anatomy and palaeontology. He spent his lifetime studying the anatomy of animals, and broke new ground by comparing living and fossil specimens many he uncovered himself. However, Cuvier always opposed evolutionary theories and was during his day the foremost proponent of catastrophism, a doctrine contending that geological changes were caused by sudden cataclysms. He received universal acclaim when he...