Nature

Modern Forests is an environmental, institutional, and cultural history of forestry in colonial eastern India. By carefully examining the influence of regional political formations and biogeographic processes on land and forest management, this book offers an analysis of the interrelated social and biophysical factors that influenced landscape change. Through a cultural analysis of powerful landscape representations, Modern Forests reveals the contention, debates, and uncertainty that persisted for two hundred years of colonial rule as forests were identified, classified, and brought under different regimes of control and were transformed to serve a variety of imperial and local interests.

The author examines the regionally varied conditions that generated widely different kinds of forest management systems, and the ways in which certain ideas and forces became dominant at various times. Through this emphasis on regional socio-political processes and ecologies, the author offers a new way to write environmental history. Instead of making a sharp distinction between third-world and first-world experiences in forest management, the book suggests a potential for cross-continental comparative studies through regional analyses.

The book also offers an approach to historical anthropology that does not make apolitical separations between foreign and indigenous views of the world of nature, insisting instead that different cultural repertoires for discerning the natural, and using it, can be fashioned out of shared concerns within and across social groups. The politics of such cultural construction, the book argues, must be studied through institutional histories and ethnographies of statemaking. In conclusion, the author offers a genealogy of development as it can be traced from forest conservation in colonial eastern India.

The Santa Cruz Mountains, an area covering almost 1,400 square miles from San Francisco southward to the Monterey County line, are a part of the Coast Range of Central California. The Mountains and the adjacent lowlands have a rich vascular flora, and about 1,800 species, subspecies, varieties, forms, and hybrids of ferns, conifers, and flowering plants, distributed among 168 families, have been reported from the region. This comprehensive flora, the first of the area, is designed for use by both the serious beginner and the trained botanist.

The flora is illustrated by 250 line drawing and ten photographs. In addition, there is a map of the Santa Cruz Mountains area and a stratigraphic profile of the rock formations. The stratigraphic profile and a section on geology have been contributed by Dr. Earl E. Brabb of the United States Geological Survey.

Distributional notes, keys to families, genera, and species, pertinent synonymy, a glossary of technical terms, an index of place names, and common0name and scientific-name indexes form the body of the text. The Introduction contains a description of the geography of the Santa Cruz Mountains and adjacent lowlands, seconds on the geology and climate, a brief discussion and analysis of the vegetation and floristic affinities of the area, and a history of past botanical collecting. A selected list of references has been appended to allow the interested individual to pursue his studies further.

A Stanford University Press classic.

A Stanford University Press classic.

A Stanford University Press classic.

This ecological history of peasant society in the Peruvian Andes focuses on the politics of irrigation and water management in three villages whose terraces and canal systems date back to Inca times. Set in a remote valley, the book tells a story of domination and resulting social decline, showing how basic changes in the use of land, water, and labor have been pivotal in transforming the indigenous way of life.

The author carries out a comparison of contemporary practices in communities that vary systematically along certain dimensions. He analyzes the communities’ similarities and differences in hydraulic organization, landscaping, water use, and other variables. Strikingly diverse patterns appear in local practice, which prove to be the key to unraveling the area’s history.

The book concludes by describing the recent intensification of a water conflict. This struggle between peasants and former landlords ultimately led villagers to rise up against the national government. The story culminates in the violent intrusion of the revolutionary group known as Shining Path.

A Stanford University Press classic.

This guidebook, with its brief, informative text and 408 color illustrations, is designed for the fishwatcher, that inquisitive person—whether swimmer, tidepool watcher, skin or scuba diver, or fisherman—who wants to know something about the beautiful and abundant marine life from Labrador to Trinidad.

The 378 fish species that are described in words and pictures have been chosen as those most commonly sighted by divers or shoreline visitors, taken by fishermen or collectors, or found in the marketplace. Two maps assist the reader in locating the range of particular fishes, and there is a section on diving timps for beginners.

The only field guide to cover all North American butterfly species, this monumental work is also a complete natural history, fully describing the biological and ecological world of butterflies in general. It is without question the most important book on butterflies in several decades, and the most complete treatment of a major butterfly faun ever published.

The book is written at several levels of detail, most of it accessible to anyone, and employs the minimum of technical terms necessary for ensuring scientific accuracy. Extensive introductory material—a book in itself—stresses butterfly biology and ecology: structure, flight, metamorphosis, hibernation, physiology, roosting, migration, mating, egg laying, intelligence, social behavior, larval and adult foods, enemies, mimicry, variation, evolution, habitats, distribution, and conservation. The main text is arranged in phylogenetic sequence, and characteristics or behavior common to all members of a family, subfamily, or tribe are discussed at those levels. The skippers, a large group often excluded, are treated in full.

Several unique features make identification easier and more certain than with any other field guide. First, every species (and many subspecies) of butterfly ever recorded north of Mexico (or in Bermuda or Hawaii) is treated at length and illustrated in color. Over 1,800 butterflies representing all 679 species (males, females, uppersides, undersides, subspecies, etc.) are illustrated on 42 full-page plats. Another 136 color photographs illustrate the various life forms in natural habitat: eggs, larvae, pupae, and the more familiar and more spectacular adults.

The author also provides a catalogue listing all known host plant genera and the specific butterfly larvae that eat them; techniques for collecting, raising, and studying butterflies; bibliographies of the most useful plant books and other sources to further the study of butterflies; and an index of all common and scientific butterfly names and all technical terms taken up in the text.

In short, this book is indispensable for pursuing a hobby or scientific interest in butterflies.