In the nineteenth century and beyond, scientists at Cambridge produced some of the most significant developments in the study of biological variation and inheritance. The work of William Bateson (several of whose books are also reissued in this series) was especially important in this regard. This book, first published in 1906 by the botanist Robert Heath Lock (1879 1915), lucidly traces these and other milestones in modern biological understanding. A readable account is given of the evolution of the discipline since the publication of Darwin's On the Origins of Species in 1859, taking in the...

Arguably the first celebrity scientist, and the epitome of the 'Romantic' natural philosopher, Sir Humphry Davy (1778 1829) was a brilliant lecturer whose popularising of science made him famous. He pioneered electrochemistry, befriended the Romantic poets, invented a safety lamp for miners and even wrote on angling (see On the Safety Lamp and Salmonia, also reissued in this series). Described as 'the last words of a dying Plato', Consolations in Travel was published posthumously in 1830. It is an intriguing mixture of poetry, autobiographical sketches, descriptions of dreams, philosophical...

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...

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...

Thomas Bewick (1753 1828) is synonymous with finely crafted wood engravings of the natural world, and his instantly recognisable style influenced book illustration well into the nineteenth century. During his childhood in the Tyne valley, his two obsessions were art and nature. At fourteen, he was apprenticed to the engraver and businessman Ralph Beilby (1743 1817) with whom he later published A General History of Quadrupeds (also reissued in this series). The present work, with its text compiled from various sources, was the first practical field guide for the amateur ornithologist,...

Thomas Bewick (1753 1828) is synonymous with finely crafted wood engravings of the natural world, and his instantly recognisable style influenced book illustration well into the nineteenth century. During his childhood in the Tyne valley, his two obsessions were art and nature. At fourteen, he was apprenticed to the engraver and businessman Ralph Beilby (1743 1817) with whom he later published A General History of Quadrupeds (also reissued in this series). The present work, with its text compiled from various sources, was the first practical field guide for the amateur ornithologist,...

The eminent British botanist Sir William Jackson Hooker (1785 1865) expanded and developed the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew into a world-leading centre of research and conservation. Appointed its first full-time director in 1841, Hooker came to Kew following a highly successful period in the chair of botany at Glasgow University. He quickly began to extend the gardens, arranging for the building of the now famous Palm House and establishing the Museum of Economic Botany. This volume reissues Hooker's popular guides to the gardens (sixteenth edition) and to the museum (third edition), both...

Published in 1842, this important monograph by Charles Darwin (1809 82) formed the first part of a trilogy of geological studies based on observations made during the celebrated second voyage of the Beagle. Influenced by Charles Lyell's Principles of Geology, Darwin drew in particular on data from the survey of the Keeling Islands in the Indian Ocean to support his theory that subsidence of the ocean floor can account for the formation of coral atolls. He first presented his findings in a paper for the Geological Society of London in 1837, but a heavy workload and illness delayed the...

Intended for young men with limited formal education, this manual was the final project of the landscape gardener John Claudius Loudon (1783 1843). Completed by friends, the book appeared posthumously in 1845. The son of a farmer, Loudon was well aware that men who began their careers as gardeners often became the stewards of estates, bailiffs, or tenant farmers later in life, and he provides here some of the mathematical and technical instruction necessary to carry out those roles successfully. Including sections on fractions, geometry, trigonometry, architectural drawing, and the...

In 1829, botany had much to prove. A prominent lecturer, John Lindley, noted that 'it has been very much the fashion of late years, in this country, to undervalue the importance of this science, and to consider it an amusement for ladies rather than an occupation for the serious thoughts of man'. In the three documents reissued here, Cambridge botany professor John Stevens Henslow (1796 1861) demonstrates the exacting standards of his course. The work contains an 1829 catalogue of British plants, the skeleton structure of sixteen lectures for 1833 and an 1851 list of potential examination...