This volume highlights the research and findings of this natural scientist. Powerful modern microscopes have confirmed the accuracy of Haeckel's prints, which even in their day, became world famous. Haeckel's portfolio, first published between 1899 and 1904 in separate installments, is described in the opening essays. The plates illustrate Haeckel's fundamental monistic notion of the -unity of all living things- and the wide variety of forms are executed with utmost delicacy. Incipient microscopic organisms are juxtaposed with highly developed plants and animals. The pages, ordered according to geometric and -constructive- aspects, document the oness of the world in its most diversified forms. This collection of plates was not only well-received by scientists, but by artists and architects as well. Rene Binet, a pioneer of glass and iron constructions, Emile Galle, a renowned Art Nouveau designer, and the photographer Karl Blossfeld all make explicit reference to Haeckel in their work.

    IIn a stunning synthesis of art and science, Peter Stevens explores the universal patterns in which nature expresses herself. He provides a fresh way of viewing and understanding the physical world.“When we see how the branching of trees resembles the branching of arteries and the branching of rivers, how crystal grains look like soap bubbles and the plates of a tortoise’s shell, how the fiddleheads of ferns, stellar galaxies, and water emptying from the bathtub spiral in a similar manner, then we cannot help but wonder why nature uses only a few kindred forms in so many contexts…It turns out that those patterns and forms are peculiarly restricted, that the immense variety that nature creates emerges from the working and reworking of only a few formal themes.”In elegant and lucid prose, illuminated by hundreds of extraordinary photographs and geometrical drawings, Stevens examines those themes – spirals, meanders, branching patterns, explosions – and explains how they evolve according to the laws of stress, flow, turbulence, least effort, surface tension, close packing, and most important, the constraints of three-dimensional space. Steven’s insights about space and its limitations enable us to compare a lightning stroke with the tributaries of a river, and a splash of milk with galaxies in the heavens. He explores the spiral of a seashell, the markings of a giraffe, the spikes of an inkblot. His investigation carries him from the evolution of trees to the drifting of the continents, from the packing of billiard balls to black holes in space, and everywhere he rigorously shows us not only the individual beauty of natural objects, but the underlying harmony that they share.PATTERNS IN NATURE is a pleasure to read and to behold, a vivid and original piece of scholarship whose implications will influence scientists, architects and engineers for years to come – and whose aesthetic truth will enrich our appreciation of the natural world.

    With an unrivaled grasp of his subject, Professor von Frisch unfolds the marvels of instinct and inventiveness among insects, fish, birds, and mammals. Much earlier than human technicians, termites created systems of air conditioning, dug wells to a depth of 120 feet, and built central cities with satellite suburbs. Wasps may have shown the Chinese how to make paper. Bowerbirds decorate their nests with the aesthetic sense of a painter. Animals have ingeniously used stone, wood, reeds, clay, and wax as building material. They have devised hinged doors, traps, shelters with overhanging roofs, cells with waterproof lining. The precision of their architecture frequently surpasses that of humans.Magnificently illustrated with 150 drawings and 132 photographs (84 in color), Animal Architecture is a book that will fascinate anyone interested in the world of nature.

    She plunges the reader into the Cetacea family with great, great power. Her contributors include leading scientists in whale brain studies, neurology, societal habits; Arctic naturalist Farley Mowatt & dolphinologist John Lilly; poets D.H. Lawrence, Pablo Neruda, Michael McClure etc.; & scholars of whale myths in world literatures. Brain analysis indicates that whales perceive in all their senses at once; i.e., where human motor controls are in varied areas of the brain, the whale's overlap & apparently are cross-stimulated, with results we can only imagine. Whales have very long lives (nobody knows for sure how long) & have been in the oceans for 30 million years. This extraordinary collection goes beyond any studies yet published & will appeal to a reader's imagination, intuition & heart, & should satisfy the scientific mind as well. Royalties from this thickly illustrated book will go to Project Jonah, a campaign for a world moratorium on the commercial killing of whales & dolphins.--Kirkus (edited)

    Others call it the legacy left to us by famed zoologist and animal lover, Bernhard Grzimek. The original set, published in Germany in the late 1960s, is internationally renowned for its scientific reporting, coverage and illustrations, and serves as a major point of reference for researchers and students studying the animal kingdom. Thorough articles familiarize readers with animals found everywhere on the globe, detailing their life cycles, predators, food systems, overall ecology and much more. Thomson Gale proudly presents the first completely revised and updated version of this acclaimed set in 30 years. Staying true to the original scientific pedigree, our new editions of "Grzimek's Animal Life Encyclopedia are sure to serve the needs of students at every academic level.

    In The Curves of Life, Sir Theodore A. Cook (1867–1928), English author and editor, finds that the spiral or helix may lie at the core of life's first principle — that of growth. The spiral is fundamental to the structure of plants, shells, and the human body; to the periodicity of atomic elements and to an animal's horns; to microscopic DNA (the double helix) and to the Andromeda nebula.The Curves of Life portrays the significance of the spiral in 426 illustrations, from a Narwhal's tusk to Dürer's plan for a cylindrical helix. From the spiral in nature, science, and art, the author suggests ideas on the essence of beauty and man's response to it. "One of the chief beauties of the spiral as an imaginative conception is that it is always growing, yet never covering the same ground, so that it is not merely an explanation of the past, but is also a prophecy of the future."Martin Gardner, mathematician and author, said of The Curves of Life, "This is the classic reference on how the golden ratio applies to spirals and helices in nature."

    

    The text complements the paintings, stressing the important identification features of each tree. The keys are easy-to-use, designed to help even the beginner identify any tree they see in any season.

    

    

    

    American Seashells; The Marine Molluska of the Atlantic and Pacific Coasts of North America