Naturalists in Paradise
Wallace, Bates and Spruce in the Amazon
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Despite all, they were wonderfully happy during their years in this 'paradise' of forests and rivers. Their prodigious collecting included thousands of insects and plants new to science, and in addition to their huge contribution to knowledge of the Amazonian environment each is particularly famous for one discovery.
Wallace is acknowledged as a co-discoverer, along with Charles Darwin, of the theory of evolution by natural selection. Bates discovered protective mimicry among insects, a phenomenon named after him. Spruce transported the quinine-bearing Cinchona tree, the greatest medicinal plant of the nineteenth century, to India, where it saved countless lives from malaria.
Few people in the world know or have written as much about the Amazon region as John Hemming, drawing on direct experience going back fifty years. Naturalists in Paradise is a masterwork of loving and informed storytelling, the first to combine all three young men's experience of the Amazon.
John Hemming was Director of the Royal Geographical Society for over twenty years. He has travelled extensively in the Amazon region, where he experienced many of the same thrills and hardships as the naturalists featured in this book. He was awarded Peru's highest civil decoration, the Grand Cross of the Order of Merit.
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