A Victorian Naturalist

Download or read book A Victorian Naturalist written by Eileen Jay and published by Frederick Warne Publishers. This book was released on 1992 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Collection of 200 lesser known illustrations

Download or read book Revealing New Worlds written by Suzanne Le-May Sheffield and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-09-05 with total page 261 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The story of nineteenth-century science often tells a tale of a masculinized professionalizing domain. Scientific man increasingly pushed women out, marginalized them and constructed them as naturally feminine creatures incapable of intellectual work, particularly scientific work. Yet many women participated in various scientific endeavours throughout the century. This work asks why, when the waters were so inviting, did women dive deeply into the swirling maelstrom of scientific practice, scientific controversies and scientific writing? Victorian women certainly recognised that male naturalists were not always willing to welcome them warmly into their inner sanctum of scientific work honour and prestige. Moreover, they recognised the existence of a more general social stigma that thwarted any woman's participation in intellectual endeavours. However, their fascination with algology, botany and entomology led Margaret Gatty, Marianne North and Eleanor Ormerod to reach beyond acceptable gendered roles, to undertake field work, to paint, write, popularize, experiment and discover. Each exhibited a passion for their chosen field, a need for intellectual, artistic and scientific work, and a desire for scientific recognition and renown. This book examines the ability of women to understand themselves and respond to their needs as complex human beings. Within a framework of socially and scientifically constructed norms, these Victorial women use d science as a path to self-awareness and intellectual accomplishment.

Download or read book Victorian Scientific Naturalism written by Gowan Dawson and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2014-04-28 with total page 354 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Victorian Scientific Naturalism examines the secular creeds of the generation of intellectuals who, in the wake of The Origin of Species, wrested cultural authority from the old Anglican establishment while installing themselves as a new professional scientific elite. These scientific naturalists—led by biologists, physicists, and mathematicians such as William Kingdon Clifford, Joseph Dalton Hooker, Thomas Henry Huxley, and John Tyndall—sought to persuade both the state and the public that scientists, not theologians, should be granted cultural authority, since their expertise gave them special insight into society, politics, and even ethics. In Victorian Scientific Naturalism, Gowan Dawson and Bernard Lightman bring together new essays by leading historians of science and literary critics that recall these scientific naturalists, in light of recent scholarship that has tended to sideline them, and that reevaluate their place in the broader landscape of nineteenth-century Britain. Ranging in topic from daring climbing expeditions in the Alps to the maintenance of aristocratic protocols of conduct at Kew Gardens, these essays offer a series of new perspectives on Victorian scientific naturalism—as well as its subsequent incarnations in the early twentieth century—that together provide an innovative understanding of the movement centering on the issues of community, identity, and continuity.

Download or read book Birds in Their Habitats written by Ian Fraser and published by CSIRO PUBLISHING. This book was released on 2018-03-01 with total page 261 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Everywhere we go there are birds, and they all have mysteries to be unravelled. These mysteries include the way they look, from bizarre to apparently mundane, why they live where they live, and the things they do, many of which are far too incredible ever to be imagined as fiction. Birds in Their Habitats is a collection of stories and experiences, which introduce fascinating aspects of birdlife, ecology and behaviour. Informed by a wealth of historical and contemporary research, Ian Fraser takes the reader on a journey through four continents: from places as unfamiliar as the Chonos Archipelago of southern Chile and the arid Sahel woodlands of northern Cameroon to those as familiar as a suburban backyard. This is a book of discovery of birds and the places they live. And with humour and personal insight, it is a book about the sometimes strange world of the people who spend a life absorbed in birds.

Download or read book Reptiles of Victoria written by Peter Robertson and published by CSIRO PUBLISHING. This book was released on 2014-03-01 with total page 442 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Victoria's reptiles are not often encountered by urban dwellers, with many species now threatened. You may have glimpsed a skink darting into the undergrowth, a snake slithering along a walking path or a blue-tongued lizard sunning itself near your garden shed. Yet the turtles, skinks, geckos, goannas, snakes and other reptiles that call Victoria home are fascinating and important members of urban and rural ecosystems. Reptiles of Victoria is the first regional guide to all reptiles known to occur in Victoria. It contains keys and illustrated descriptions to allow identification of the 123 native, introduced and vagrant reptile species and describes their biology, ecology, distributions and the habitats in which they live. It also indicates the level of risk that the venomous snakes pose to humans and includes a brief section on first aid for snake bites. Natural history enthusiasts and professional and amateur herpetologists will find this an essential guide.

Download or read book A Victorian Naturalist's Odyssey written by Dr. Gilbert Clark and published by Xlibris Corporation. This book was released on 2013-03-06 with total page 114 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This tale is of a scholarly man, whom I was privileged to know. He passed through the last decade of his life as I passed through my teens. He had seen the British Empire reach its zenith, a period when no value was placed on wild-life conservation. Big game hunting having been approved of in the highest echelons of society. Birds had suffered badly and amongst them in the UK was the Red Kite. By 1870 it had virtually been wiped out except for a few pairs in the fastnesses of rural Wales. Having entered Wales in 1891to joint the Botany Department of the University, Dr Salter heard of their parlous plight and in 1893 bent his shoulder to the wheel. All this gave scope for expanding a simple biography into the Life and Times of Dr Salter: hence the title Odyssey. It also allowed me to show how an interest in natural history can lead to the most unexpected places and into the company of people from all walks of life in both war and peace.

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.