American Women Afield

by Bonta, Marcia

• ISBN13: 9780890966334
• ISBN10: 0890966338
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1995-04-01
• Publisher: Texas A & M Univ Pr

Summary

Armed with hand lenses and opera glasses, traveling on foot, by buggy, or model T, they explored thousands of miles of deserts, forests, beaches, and jungles. They were pioneering women naturalists who observed, studied, and experimented, then returned to write up their findings. What resulted were exquisitely written and scientifically accurate accounts of their explorations into natural science - a field long dominated by men.
Marcia Myers Bonta has collected the most charming and sensitive writings of twenty-five women naturalists of the late nineteenth through early twentieth centuries and supplemented them with well-researched biographical profiles. From Susan Fenimore Cooper's early warnings about the profligate use of natural resources to Mary Treat's tenacious defense of her scientific discoveries, from Alice Eastwood's defiance of convention to Caroline Dormon's, Lucy Braun's, and Rachel Carson's impassioned pleas to save the earth, American Women Afield catalogs the determination and devotion of these early scientists and acknowledges their invaluable contributions to ornithology, entomology, botany, agrostology, and ecology.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations
Preface
Acknowledgments
Summer, from Rural Hours	p. 1
Birds and Their Friends	p. 9
Plants That Eat Animals, from Home Studies in Nature	p. 17
From On the Plains and among the Peaks; or How Mrs. Maxwell Made Her Natural History Collection, by Mary Dartt	p. 33
Experiences of a Collector Collecting on Biscayne Bay, Part II	p. 45
The Woman Botanist, from Summer in a Bog	p. 55
The Home Life of the Chimney Swift, from Birds of an Iowa Dooryard	p. 62
Down with the House Wren Boxes, from Birds of an Iowa Dooryard
Communal Life, from Wasps: Social and Solitary, with George W. Peckham	p. 75
Ammophila and Her Caterpillars, from Wasps: Social and Solitary, with George W. Peckham
Letter: May 7, 1906 In Portu Bodega	p. 84
Ruffed Grouse: Partridge, from Birds through an Opera Glass	p. 95
Long-Billed Marsh Wren, from Birds of Village and Field
Camping under the Stars on the Way Up, from Among the Birds in the Grand Canyon Country
A Dweller in Tents, from Ways of the Six-Footed	p. 106
The Hermit Thrush: The Voice of the Northern Woods	p. 114
Tenants of Birdsacre
Eastern Brazil through an Agrostologist's Spectacles	p. 126
Camping on the Equator	p. 136
Three Thousand Miles up the Amazon
Mary S. Young's Journal of Botanical Explorations in Trans-Pecos, Texas, August-September, 1914	p. 152
Ecology and World War I, from Adventures in Ecology	p. 161
Marooned in a Potato Field	p. 171
Mayflies: Ephemerida (Plectoptera), from Field Book of Ponds and Streams	p. 179
Fresh-Water Sponges in Winter
The Awakening, from Research Is a Passion with Me	p. 189
On Watching an Ovenbird's Nest, from The Watcher at the Nest
The Grandchildren of Uno and 4M, from The Watcher at the Nest
Behavior of Pompilid Wasps, from Wasp Studies Afield, with Phil Rau	p. 203
Watching a Carolina Wren's Nest	p. 210
Camping in the Kisatchie Wold	p. 216
The Forest of Lynn Fork of Leatherwood	p. 223
From Crip, Come Home	p. 230
Sea Pansies, from The Edge of the Sea	p. 236
Basket Starfish, from The Edge of the Sea
The Other Road, from Silent Spring
Afterword
Selected Bibliography
Table of Contents provided by Blackwell. All Rights Reserved.