The Species Seekers : Heroes, Fools, and the Mad Pursuit of Life on Earth (Hardcover)

from fyrefly98

Summary: "It is the subtext to those endless drawers of carefully arranged specimens in museums around the world: Someone had collected each specimen; killed it; skinned it; stuffed it, set it, or put it in preservative; pencil-scratched a label for it; carried it cross-country; shipped it home; ...

from JBD1

In The Species Seekers: Heroes, Fools, and the Mad Pursuit of Life on Earch, Richard Conniff does for natural history what John Noble Wilford's The Mapmakers did for cartography: a handy, one-volume general history. Full of fascinating anecdotes about the origins and progress of those who spent t...

from gbelik

This is the story of the remarkable, dedicated and sometimes very quirky people who collected and classified new plants and animals from all over the world, primarily in the 19th century. It's full of information and left me flabbergasted by the length some people would go to be the first to iden...