"Prideaux John Selby, naturalist and High-Sheriff of Northumberland, devoted himself to forestry, entomology, and ornithology. Selby is best remembered as the first author/artist to attempt to produce a set of life-sized illustrations of british birds, the "Illustrations of British ornithology", London: 1821-34. Selby embodied the experience of nearly forty years of forestry (chiefly gained on his plantations at Twizell) in this present work."--Antiquarian bookseller's description.
This "stunning journey through a country that is home to exhilarating natural wonders, and a scarring colonial past . . . makes breathtakingly clear the connection between nature and humanity, and offers a singular portrait of the complexities inherent to our ideas of identity, family, and love" (Refinery29). A chance discovery of letters written by her immigrant grandfather leads Jessica J. Lee to her ancestral homeland, Taiwan. There, she seeks his story while growing closer to the land he knew. Lee hikes mountains home to Formosan flamecrests, birds found nowhere else on earth, and swims in a lake of drowned cedars. She bikes flatlands where spoonbills alight by fish farms, and learns about a tree whose fruit can float in the ocean for years, awaiting landfall. Throughout, Lee unearths surprising parallels between the natural and human stories that have shaped her family and their beloved island. Joyously attentive to the natural world, Lee also turns a critical gaze upon colonialist explorers who mapped the land and named plants, relying on and often effacing the labor and knowledge of local communities. Two Trees Make a Forest is a genre–shattering book encompassing history, travel, nature, and memoir, an extraordinary narrative showing how geographical forces are interlaced with our family stories.
"Prideaux John Selby, naturalist and High-Sheriff of Northumberland, devoted himself to forestry, entomology, and ornithology. Selby is best remembered as the first author/artist to attempt to produce a set of life-sized illustrations of british birds, the "Illustrations of British ornithology", London: 1821-34. Selby embodied the experience of nearly forty years of forestry (chiefly gained on his plantations at Twizell) in this present work."--Antiquarian bookseller's description.
"A volume for a lifetime" is how The New Yorker described the first of Donald Culross Peatie's two books about American trees published in the 1950s. In this one-volume edition, modern readers are introduced to one of the best nature writers of the last century. As we read Peattie's eloquent and entertaining accounts of American trees, we catch glimpses of our country's history and past daily life that no textbook could ever illuminate so vividly. Here you'll learn about everything from how a species was discovered to the part it played in our country’s history. Pioneers often stabled an animal in the hollow heart of an old sycamore, and the whole family might live there until they could build a log cabin. The tuliptree, the tallest native hardwood, is easier to work than most softwood trees; Daniel Boone carved a sixty-foot canoe from one tree to carry his family from Kentucky into Spanish territory. In the days before the Revolution, the British and the colonists waged an undeclared war over New England's white pines, which made the best tall masts for fighting ships. It's fascinating to learn about the commercial uses of various woods -- for paper, fine furniture, fence posts, matchsticks, house framing, airplane wings, and dozens of other preplastic uses. But we cannot read this book without the occasional lump in our throats. The American elm was still alive when Peattie wrote, but as we read his account today we can see what caused its demise. Audubon's portrait of a pair of loving passenger pigeons in an American beech is considered by many to be his greatest painting. It certainly touched the poet in Donald Culross Peattie as he depicted the extinction of the passenger pigeon when the beech forest was destroyed. A Natural History of North American Trees gives us a picture of life in America from its earliest days to the middle of the last century. The information is always interesting, though often heartbreaking. While Peattie looks for the better side of man's nature, he reports sorrowfully on the greed and waste that have doomed so much of America's virgin forest.
Founded in 1919 to deal with the chronic timber shortage after the First World War, the Forestry Commission has developed from a government department focused on production into a leading environmental organisation that also champions the landscape, encouraging wildlife and public access. The sheer scale of the organisation between and after the wars meant that it built its own roads and bridges, constructed and supported entire villages and planted over two million acres of forest. Published to mark the centenary of the Commission, British Forests examines not only its unique history but also the Commission's role in research, and the promotion of tree planting in both cities and countryside. The book features a selection of the Nations' forests and beautiful botanical illustrations of trees from its pinetum at Bedgebury in Kent.
A beautifully written classic of nature writing. 'A masterly account...of supreme interest...a classic' Country Life Long accepted as the best work on the subject, Oliver Rackham's book is both a comprehensive history of Britain's woodland and a field-work guide that presents trees individually and as part of the landscape. From prehistoric times, through the Roman period and into the Middle Ages, Oliver Rackham describes the changing character, role and history of trees and woodland. He concludes this definitive study with a section on the conservation and future of Britain's trees, woodlands and hedgerows.
