Sir William Jackson Hooker (1785 1865) was an eminent British botanist, best known for expanding and developing the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew into a leading centre of botanic research and conservation. At the age of nineteen he undertook an expedition to Iceland, his first outside Britain. Unfortunately, all his specimens and notes were destroyed in a fire on the return voyage (described in Volume 1), but he was able, with the help of the notes made by Sir Joseph Banks on an earlier expedition, to write this account. His work was first published privately in 1811, but a second edition was...

Sir William Jackson Hooker (1785 1865) was an eminent British botanist, best known for expanding and developing the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew into a leading centre of botanic research and conservation. At the age of nineteen he undertook an expedition to Iceland, his first outside Britain. Unfortunately, all his specimens and notes were destroyed in a fire on the return voyage (described in Volume 1), but he was able, with the help of the notes made by Sir Joseph Banks on an earlier expedition, to write this account. His work was first published privately in 1811, but a second edition was...

Sir Joseph Dalton Hooker (1817 1911) was one of the most eminent botanists of the later nineteenth century. Educated at Glasgow, he developed his studies of plant life by examining specimens all over the world. After several successful scientific expeditions, first to the Antarctic and later to India, he was appointed to succeed his father as Director of the Botanical Gardens at Kew. Hooker was the first to hear of and support Charles Darwin's theory of natural selection, and over their long friendship the two scientists exchanged many letters. Another close friend was the scientist T. H....

Sir Joseph Dalton Hooker (1817 1911) was one of the most eminent botanists of the later nineteenth century. Educated at Glasgow, he developed his studies of plant life by examining specimens all over the world. After several successful scientific expeditions, first to the Antarctic and later to India, he was appointed to succeed his father as Director of the Botanical Gardens at Kew. Hooker was the first to hear of and support Charles Darwin's theory of natural selection, and over their long friendship the two scientists exchanged many letters. Another close friend was the scientist T. H....

Sir Joseph Banks (1743 1820), botanist and patron of science, was a pivotal figure in eighteenth-century intellectual circles. He travelled around the world with Captain Cook as naturalist on the Endeavour (1768 1771), exploring first Tahiti, then Australia, New Zealand and Indonesia, and contributed 10,000 of his personal wealth to help finance the expedition. He became President of the Royal Society and scientific adviser to the Royal Gardens at Kew, counting George III as a personal friend. He both helped plan the first penal colony in New South Wales, and bred Merino sheep to be farmed...

When botanist Leonard Cockayne (1855 1934) first received an invitation from the German publisher Engelmann to write an account of the botany of New Zealand, much of it was still unknown. He spent the period from 1904 to 1913 immersed in fieldwork, and his first edition was not published until 1921. In this 1928 second edition Cockayne extensively updates the text, adding the results of further research from the intervening years. This work gives detailed descriptions of New Zealand's plant life, but Cockayne also considers the history of botanical study of the islands, from Captain Cook's...

Written by Swiss born geologist and explorer Louis Agassiz (1807 73), this 1850 publication was the first detailed scientific account of the natural phenomena of Lake Superior. Agassiz, who became a professor at Harvard and later founded the Harvard Museum of Comparative Zoology, was the first scientist to suggest that the earth had experienced an ice age. In the summer of 1848 he led an expedition of his students to Lake Superior, to examine the northern shores, which had previously received very little attention from scientists. The artist James Elliot Cabot (1821 1903), who was included in...

David Douglas (1799 1834), the influential Scottish botanist and plant collector, trained as a gardener before attending Perth College and Glasgow University. His genius for botany flourished and his talents came to the attention of the Royal Horticultural Society. With the society's backing he went to North America in 1823, beginning his life-long fascination with the region's flora. He discovered thousands of new species and introduced 240 of them to Britain, including the Douglas fir. Douglas continued to explore and discover plant species until his death in the Sandwich Islands...

Published in 1898, just months after the death of Charles Dodgson (1832 98), the Oxford don better known by his pseudonym of Lewis Carroll, this biography investigates the imaginative genius of the writer, mathematician and photographer. Carroll's nephew, Stuart Dodgson Collingwood, had access to his subject's private papers and thirteen volumes of his private diary. He draws upon these materials in this memoir of the man who revolutionised writing for children, presenting a detailed account of Carroll's family origins, his eccentricities, artistic life, unorthodox friendships and his special...

E. G. Browne (1862 1926), who combined outstanding skills in medicine and Arabic and Persian studies, has left an indelible mark in his fields of expertise. He first learned Turkish in his teens, and went on to study all the languages of the Islamic tradition, while also qualifying as a physician. This collection of four FitzPatrick Lectures, delivered at the Royal College of Physicians in 1919 20, and first published in 1921, covers subjects such as Arabic as a scientific language, the transmission of Greek learning, and important Islamic medieval writers. Brown describes the role of Islamic...