To save content items to your account,
please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies.
If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account.
Find out more about saving content to .
To save content items to your Kindle, first ensure no-reply@cambridge.org
is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings
on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part
of your Kindle email address below.
Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations.
‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi.
‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
Having trained in Edinburgh as a surgeon and served aboard Royal Navy vessels, Sir James Clark (1788–1870) developed a particular interest in the spread of the tuberculosis pandemic in Europe. A licentiate of the Royal College of Physicians from 1826, and elected to the Royal Society in 1832, he became a trusted physician and friend to Queen Victoria and Prince Albert. This early work of 1820 was based on his first-hand knowledge of the treatment of tuberculosis in southern Europe as well as the effects of climate on the disease. Among his tubercular patients in Italy around this time was the poet John Keats (who would succumb in 1821). Also reissued in this series are Clark's Treatise on Pulmonary Consumption (1835), his Memoir of John Conolly (1869), and The Influence of Climate in the Prevention and Cure of Chronic Diseases (1829), a development of aspects of the present work.
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 1858. Illustrated throughout, these documents reveal the areas and specimens accessible to a receptive Victorian public. Hooker's ten volumes of Icones Plantarum (1837–54) have also been reissued in this series, along with many works by his son and equally accomplished successor, Sir Joseph Dalton Hooker (1817–1911).
Trained by his father, a market gardener, Philip Miller (1691–1771) rose to become Britain's most eminent horticulturalist in the eighteenth century. Following a period as a nurseryman in Southwark, he was appointed the head gardener of the Chelsea Physic Garden by the Society of Apothecaries in 1722, upon the recommendation of Sir Hans Sloane. Under Miller's supervision, the diversity of plants at Chelsea outstripped that of all other European botanic gardens. His talent was equally reflected in his writings. Miller's most famous work, The Gardener's Dictionary, ran to eight editions during his lifetime, as did his celebrated abridgement, reissued here in its 1771 sixth edition. Ranging widely in coverage from agriculture to winemaking, as well as incorporating traditional gardening topics, the work reflects the progress of contemporary plant science and the breadth of knowledge acquired by one of its foremost practitioners.
An Oxford-educated clergyman and prolific writer on natural history topics ranging from seashore wildlife to microscopy, John George Wood (1827–89) wrote and lectured for a receptive Victorian audience. His books were not rigorously scientific, but they made their subjects accessible to laypeople and were said to have inspired many future naturalists in their youth. His Nature's Teachings (1877) has also been reissued in this series. Theodore Wood (1862–1923) published this biography of his father in 1890. The account covers Wood's childhood and education, his clerical work and his desire to share his enthusiasm for the natural world with the public. His lecturing engagements, including a tour of America, and his home life are also discussed. An affectionate portrait of a significant figure in the history of popular science, this work sheds light on the intellectual interests of its subject and his readership.
Best known for his ideas relating to evolution, French naturalist Jean-Baptiste Lamarck (1744–1829) first built his reputation as a botanist and was elected to the prestigious Académie des Sciences in 1779. His career took a new turn in 1793 when he was made professor of 'insects, worms and microscopic animals' at the Muséum National d'Histoire Naturelle, although he lacked prior knowledge of the subject area. Undaunted, Lamarck set out to classify organisms which few naturalists had considered worthy of study since Linnaeus. He was the first to distinguish vertebrates from 'invertebrates' - a term he coined - by the presence of a vertebral column. In this groundbreaking seven-volume work, published between 1815 and 1822, he arranges invertebrates into twelve classes, laying the foundations for the modern study of these organisms. Volume 5, first published in 1818, covers arachnids, crustaceans, annelids, cirripedes and conchifera.
A member, and later president, of the Académie des Sciences, French botanist and doctor René 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 edition appeared in four volumes in 1800. Combining its two volumes of plates into one, this reissue will give modern researchers an insight into the promulgation of pioneering plant science. Volume 1 contains the first thirteen classes of plants in the Linnaean system of taxonomy, from Monandria to Polyandria.
Professor of natural philosophy at the Royal Institution between 1853 and 1887, the physicist and mountaineer John Tyndall (1820–93) passionately sought to share scientific understanding with the Victorian public. A lucid and highly regarded communicator, he lectured on such topics as heat, light, magnetism and electricity. In this collection of twelve lectures, first published in 1863, Tyndall discusses the general properties of heat and its associated physical processes, such as convection, conduction and radiation. He presents concepts so that they are intelligible to non-specialists, and helpful illustrations of laboratory equipment accompany his descriptions of experiments and phenomena. Throughout, he explains the research and discoveries of renowned scientists, including Sir Humphry Davy, Julius von Mayer, James Prescott Joule, and Hermann von Helmholtz. Several of Tyndall's other publications, from his lectures on sound to his exploration of alpine glaciers, are also reissued in this series.
The Alchemy Reader is a collection of primary source readings on alchemy and hermeticism, which offers readers an informed introduction and background to a complex field through the works of important ancient, medieval and early modern alchemical authors. Including selections from the legendary Hermes Trimegistus to Robert Boyle and Isaac Newton, the book illustrates basic definitions, conceptions, and varied interests and emphases; and it also illustrates the highly interdisciplinary character of alchemical thought and its links with science and medicine, philosophical and religious currents, the visual arts and iconography and, especially, literary discourse. Like the notable anthologies of alchemical writings published in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, it seeks to counter the problem of an acute lack of reliable primary texts and to provide a convenient and accessible point of entry to the field.