Great Journeys in the Heart of the Amazon Forest - Softcover

Bates, Walker Henry

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0141025395 ISBN 13: 9780141025391

Publisher: Penguin UK, 2007

Synopsis

One of the most impressive of all Victorian scientists but also a marvelous writer, Bates' (1825-1892) account of his years in the upper reaches of the Amazon is almost too good to be true - a great monument to human inquisitiveness as he battles great hoards of malevolent reptiles and insects in his quest for ever more obscure specimens on ever more narrow and creeper-choked tributaries. "Great Journeys" allows readers to travel both around the planet and back through the centuries - but also back into ideas and worlds frightening, ruthless and cruel in different ways from our own. Few reading experiences can begin to match that of engaging with writers who saw astounding things: great civilizations, walls of ice, violent and implacable jungles, deserts and mountains, and multitudes of birds and flowers new to science. Reading these books is to see the world afresh, to rediscover a time when many cultures were quite strange to each other, where legends and stories were treated as facts and in which so much was still to be discovered.

About this title

About the Author:

Walter Henry Bates was born in 1825 and died in 1892. His extraordinary eleven year residence on the Amazon resulted in a haul of some 15,00 specimens, principally insects, well over half previously unknown to science.

About this edition

• Publisher: Penguin UK
• Publication date: 2007
• ISBN 10: 0141025395
• ISBN 13: 9780141025391
• Binding: Mass Market Paperback
• Number of pages: 128