Wanderings in the Great Forests of Borneo: Travels and

Wanderings in the Great Forests of Borneo: Travels and Researches of a Naturalist in Sarawak (Classic Reprint)

Excerpt from Wanderings in the Great Forests of Borneo: Travels and Researches of a Naturalist in Sarawak

To naturalists generally, but especially to botanists, the author of the following pages stands in no need of introduction. His work in Borneo, which he here describes, was but the prelude to many years of travel and exploration which have found expression, in so far as regards their scientific results, in the pages of various Societies' publications, and the shelves and drawers of the great museums of Italy and other countries - a monument alike to the author's botanical and zoological knowledge and his tireless zeal as a collector. But while his name is thus familiar to the student of science, notably to those who have made the fauna and flora of the Eastern Archipelago a special subject of research, it is probably less so to what an old translator once contemptuously described as "the mere English reader," or - as it would nowadays be phrased - the man in the street. To the latter it is only necessary to say that no one is more fully qualified to act as guide to the great island amidst whose primeval forests he wandered for so long. Whether the scientific reader does or does not admit the validity of all Dr. Beccari's theories concerning species-formation, he cannot call in question his abundant experience of the country, or his knowledge of the subjects of which he treats.

Dr. Beccari tells us that nearly forty years have passed away since the days of which he writes, and deems an apology necessary for so lengthy a hesitation. Certainly, in these days of "steam and speed," a forty-year-old description of a country might seem to a hasty thinker something more than a little out of date. Were he to reject the volume on these grounds, his conclusion would be an erroneous one, and he would miss not a little. These vast primeval groves, through which the author will guide him so pleasantly, secure from mosquito's bite and equatorial temperatures, are to-day as they have been from almost the beginning of things. The stupendous trees which form them have turned from seedling to mould for Ã¦ons not to be numbered. Beneath the shade of their predecessors the common ancestors of Man and Mayas may have wandered; and though change is touching even the unchanging East, and there are such things as volcanoes to be reckoned with, the end of the Bornean forest is not, as yet, within sight. It is with nature rather than man that Dr. Beccari deals, and nature needs something more than a generation to get out of date.

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Country USA
Brand Forgotten Books
Manufacturer Forgotten Books
Binding Paperback
ItemPartNumber black & white illustrations
ReleaseDate 2018-08-24
EANs 9781332308835

Country	USA
Brand	Forgotten Books
Manufacturer	Forgotten Books
Binding	Paperback
ItemPartNumber	black & white illustrations
ReleaseDate	2018-08-24
EANs	9781332308835

Wanderings in the Great Forests of Borneo: Travels and Researches of a Naturalist in Sarawak (Classic Reprint)