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Essay on the Geography of Plants
Alexander von Humboldt & Aimé Bonpland
Edited by: Stephen T. Jackson
Translated by: Sylvie Romanowski
University of Chicago Press, 2009
ISBN: 0-226-36066-0 |
Reading Humboldt (at least one of his works) should be required of any Biologist today, if for no other reason than to understand some of the history of the field. Plus, it is simply fun to read a firsthand account of scientific observations from a time when writing about these things was so much less formal. More specifically, this essay will summarize Humboldt’s expedition through northern South America (primarily present day Venezuela, Colombia and Ecuador) at the turn of the 19th century, and the various biogeographical observations he made there, in particular, the distribution of hundreds of plant species/genera/families along the altitudinal gradient of the Andes mountain range. Along the way, we get Humboldt’s thoughts about what this all means as he sets the stage for the field of biogeography.
Of particular interest, this book provides the first complete English language translation of Humboldt’s essay, now making it accessible to many more readers. Additionally, it contains a series of explanatory sections to make the Essay more comprehensible to contemporary readers. Particularly enlightening are the “Introduction”, to provide valuable insight into Humboldt’s world; “Humboldt’s Pictorial Science”, to explain the artistic, scientific and philosophical meaning of his work; and the “Biographical Sketches”, where we meet the large cast of characters that were Humboldt’s contemporaries, colleagues and friends.
If additional incentive is required to pick up this book, readers should know that it contains a wonderful reproduction of Humboldt’s Tableau physique, which is a poster sized color plate depicting a cross-section through the Andes mountain range at the level of the Chimborazo volcano in present day Ecuador, and which contains a wealth of his findings in South America.
