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James Bryce (1806-77) was a Scottish schoolteacher and geologist. His numerous articles on geology earned him a place in the Geological Society of London (1834) and in the Royal Society of Edinburgh (1875). He also campaigned to reform the Scottish universities and for Scottish education to be independent of the English system. In 1855 Bryce conducted a geological survey of Clydesdale and the Isle of Arran for the British Association for the Advancement of Science (BAAS). His findings were published the same year, in this book. Bryce's study records the natural history of the two regions, with descriptions of the geological features encountered on various expeditions in Arran. Bryce also describes the Arran flora, marine fauna, and rare insect life. This book remained the geological authority on Arran and Clydesdale for a long time; the third edition, reissued here, was published in 1865.

In later life the recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize for his humanitarian work, the explorer and scientist Fridtjof Nansen (1861-1930) encouraged and supported the 1901 voyage of his fellow Norwegian Roald Amundsen (1872-1928), publishing this account of its scientific findings in 1906. Amundsen had just purchased his famous boat, the Gjoa, and wanted to test her in Arctic waters. He planned to pay for the expedition by hunting seals, but wanted to carry out scientific work at the same time. On Nansen's advice, he decided to make oceanographic observations. After a six-month voyage, he returned with both observations and samples of water and plankton which considerably enlarged understanding of the bottom waters of the Norwegian Sea and the play of current in the area. Nansen's work supplies technical details, diagrams and maps from this remarkable scientific survey.

Throughout the nineteenth century, Britain remained hungry for minerals to fuel her industrial and economic growth. Archibald Liversidge (1846-1927) found his knowledge and research to be in high demand. He had studied at the Royal College of Chemistry, and then obtained an exhibition to Cambridge, where he founded the Cambridge University Natural Sciences Club. At just twenty-seven years old Liversidge was appointed Reader in Geology at the University of Sydney, where he revolutionized the study of minerals and their potential applications. First published in 1876, and reprinted here from the enlarged, third edition of 1888, his chemical audit of the minerals of New South Wales became a key text for students of this field. Divided into two sections that address metallic and non-metallic minerals in turn, and incorporating a detailed map and substantial appendix, this work is of enduring interest and importance to geologists, chemists and historians of science.

Not much is known about the life of William T. Kilgour, apart from the fact that in the late nineteenth century he spent two decades as an irregular member of staff at the meteorological observatory on Ben Nevis. In 1905, a year after the observatory closed due to lack of funds, Kilgour published this account of his experiences, including some of 'the more outstanding incidents inseparable from an existence spent at such an altitude', both as a chronicle of life on the mountain and to encourage the public to support the reopening of the observatory. The text is illustrated with several photographs of the striking natural surroundings as well as images of the meteorologists working and relaxing at the inhospitably located station. The result is an accessible and charming record of scientific life on Britain's highest peak around the turn of the century.

Luke Howard (1772-1864) was a pharmacist and businessman, but is most famous for his contributions to meteorology. He classified clouds by their appearance and gave them their modern names of cumulus, cirrus, nimbus and stratus. He was educated at a Quaker school in Oxfordshire, then trained as a pharmacist, but was fascinated by weather throughout his life, and developed into a keen amateur meteorologist. He wrote several important texts on the subject including The Climate of London, an early study in urban climatology, and On the Modification of Clouds (both also reissued in this series). Published in 1837, Seven Lectures on Meteorology covers the components of the atmosphere, seasonal variation in winds and temperature, the use of barometers, cloud structure, and visual phenomena such as rainbows and the Aurora Borealis. This reissue also includes Howard's short 1842 book which details selected British weather data from 1824 to 1841.

The geologist Sir Henry Thomas De la Beche (1796-1855) made important contributions as both a surveyor and a theorist. Elected to the Royal Society in 1823, he mapped geological strata in Devon during the 1830s and became the founding director of the British Geological Survey, the world's first national geological survey. In 1847, he was elected president of the Geological Society of London. Reflecting the scope of his scientific knowledge, the present work covers a wide range of topics, including the density of planets, the mineralisation of organic remains, and what could be inferred from the fossils thus created. The book was first published in 1834, the year he became embroiled in an argument with his contemporary Roderick Murchison. Lasting several years, the dispute became known as the 'The Great Devonian Controversy'. De la Beche's Geological Manual (third edition, 1833) has also been reissued in this series.

The Scottish geologist Sir Roderick Impey Murchison (1792-1871) first proposed the Silurian period after studying ancient rocks in Wales in the 1830s. Naming the sequence after the Silures, a Celtic tribe, he believed that the fossils representing the origins of life could be attributed to this period. This assertion sparked a heated dispute with his contemporary Adam Sedgwick, ultimately ruining their friendship. First published in 1854, Siluria is a significant reworking of Murchison's earlier book, The Silurian System, which had appeared in 1839. Thorough in his approach, he combines his own findings with those of researchers around the world, touching also on the later Devonian, Carboniferous and Permian periods as well as questions of natural history. An important text in nineteenth-century geology and palaeontology, the work contains a valuable geological map of Wales along with detailed engravings of fossils, including crustaceans, cephalopods and fish.

In the nineteenth century, scientists were convinced that the North Pole was free of ice. This myth was fostered since the eighteenth century, when it was thought that ice came from rivers and mainly formed near coasts. Rivers supposedly carried into the north seas a prodigious amount of glacons or 'ice cubes', which formed enormous masses of ice as they accumulated. This misconception led to an inaccurate climate theory that persisted until the beginning of the twentieth century: ice near a country's shores produces bitter cold in that country. This book, published in 1818, links the harsh winters of 1815-17 in England and Europe to the impressive amount of ice encountered at the same time in the Atlantic. The cold was thought to be caused by the break-up and southward drift of Arctic ice. It is attributed to the French meteorologist Antoine Aubriet, who was active in 1815-30.

Jean-Francois Daubuisson (1769-1841), geologist and engineer, was an Officer of the Legion d'Honneur, Knight of St Louis and Chief Engineer at the Royal Mining Corps. He published numerous papers on geology, mining and hydraulics, and is best known for his textbooks, Traite de geognosie and Traite d'hydraulique. He studied geology and mineralogy in Freiburg with Abraham Werner, the key proponent of Neptunism, the theory that all rocks had an aqueous origin. Later in his career Daubuisson was to side with the Plutonists, who argued that basalts formed from molten rock. However, in this paper, published in French in 1803, he describes his observations of the basalts of Saxony and argues that they, and all basalts, are sedimentary. This English translation by the Secretary of the Wernerian Natural History Society was published in 1814, and provides a fascinating insight into this discredited but once influential theory of the Earth.

The original French edition of this book appeared in 1866 as part of Hachette's extensive, popularising Bibliotheque des Merveilles series, which included several science titles by Frederic Zurcher (1816-90) and Elie Margolle (1816-84). Their books were illustrated with attractive wood-cuts, and remained in print until the 1880s; they were also translated into English. This volume was published in London in 1868, and is a good example of popular science publishing in Victorian Britain. The material is organised geographically, beginning in Europe with Vesuvius, Etna and Icelandic volcanoes including Hecla, all of which had recently seen major eruptions. The authors quote from eyewitness accounts, and refer to scholarly publications on volcanoes including Darwin (1844) and Scrope (1862), also reissued in the Cambridge Library Collection. Later chapters describe oceanic volcanoes, the Andes, the volcanic zone of New Zealand's North Island, and recently discovered volcanoes such as Mt Erebus in Antarctica.

Prussian explorer and naturalist Alexander von Humboldt (1769-1859) was described by Darwin as 'the greatest scientific traveller who ever lived'. His boundless curiosity as well as his scientific and cultural knowledge helped lay the foundations of physical geography, climatology, ecology and oceanography. In 1799, Humboldt embarked on a five-year trip to explore Central and South America. He devoted a large amount of time to the study of geognosie, the science of the origin and distribution of minerals and rocks forming the earth, later known as geology. In 1805, Humboldt published his first impressions of volcanoes and earthquakes in the Americas in his Personal Narrative. In this 1826 work, he makes the first systematic attempt to compare the rocks of the Old and New Worlds. This groundbreaking analysis became one of the most important geological works of its time.

The explorer and multi-disciplinary scientist Alexander von Humboldt (1769-1859) was a prominent figure in the European scientific community of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and the first to make a scientific survey of South and Central America. His travels alone brought him widespread recognition, but the extensive field notes and research he undertook were developed further on his return. Originally published in French and translated in 1823, this work brought his geological speculations to a British audience. Humboldt explores the positioning of different types of rocks across the globe, and the causes behind these formations. He also hypothesises that the flora of these areas are affected by the geology, which in turn is influenced by the thermal currents of the earth's molten core. These insights into rock formations are also key to Humboldt's theory of continental drift, now recognised as resulting from the shifting of the continental plates.

Swiss-born zoologist, geologist and paleontologist Louis Agassiz (1807-73) was among the foremost scientists of his day. When he took up the study of glaciology and glacial geomorphology in Switzerland in 1836, he recorded evidence left by former glaciers, such as glacial erratics, drumlins and rock scouring and scratching. In this work, published in 1840, he proposed a revolutionary ice-age theory, according to which, glaciers are the remaining portions of sheets of ice which once covered the earth. His radical suggestion undermined the hypothesis that landscape features were the result of a great biblical flood. Although Agassiz's invaluable work led some to acclaim him as the 'father' of glacial theory, critics have cited the contributions of others, including Jean de Charpentier and Karl Schimper. The book also describes the features of active glaciers, including ice tables, ice pinnacles and moraines.

Alexander von Humboldt (1769-1859), 'the greatest scientific traveller who ever lived' according to Darwin, made groundbreaking contributions to the fields of geography, oceanography, climatology and ecology. In 1804, he returned from a five-year exploration of Latin America with an incredible wealth of specimens and data which provided the foundations for his theories on the natural order. He expounds them in this book, which was printed in German in 1808 before being translated by the geographer Jean-Baptiste Benoit Eyries (1767-1846) and published in French in 1828. Humboldt does more than provide descriptions of the great features and phenomena of the Earth, ranging from the geological character of immense plains and steppes to the structure and action of volcanoes. He combines a rigorous scientific approach with his emotional and aesthetic responses to the natural world, thereby constructing a true 'philosophy of nature'.

First published in 1880, this study of the biology and geography of islands investigates some of the most pressing questions of nineteenth-century natural science. Why do countries as far-flung as Britain and Japan share similar flora and fauna when those of neighbouring islands in Malaysia are utterly unalike? What is the origin of life in New Zealand? And why do the geological formations of Scotland and Wales appear to be the result of glaciers when those countries lie in the temperate zone? Dismissing popular theories of submerged continents and 'special creation', Alfred Russel Wallace (1823-1913) presents extensive evidence of the mass migration of species, and of drastic and repeated climatic changes across the globe. Drawing on a vast range of sources and the newest ocean soundings to support his theories, Wallace wrote the text for the intelligent general reader. It remains a fascinating introduction to the subject matter today.