BOOK OF THE MONTH: MARCH 2014

Title         : The Galapagos
Author     : Henry Nicholls
Pages       : 256
Price        : $ 19.56
Publisher : Profile Books
ISBN        : 10: 1781250537
 
“The natural history of these islands is eminently curious, and well deserves attention.” So wrote Charles Darwin of the Galapagos in the first edition of his Journal of Researches.Some of the earliest visitors to the Galapagos were horrified by what they found. For the Bishop of Panama, for instance, (who first discovered the islands in 1535), this rabble of raw, parched, Pacific volcanoes with their devil-like iguanas and gargantuan tortoises was like hell on earth.

But for Darwin (and all those who came in his intellectual wake) the Galapagos archipelago proved to be more like paradise. The lovely cover of The Galapagos shows three birds from Charles Darwin’s Zoology of the Voyage of H.M.S. Beagle, as depicted by taxidermist and illustrator John Gould. The warbler finch (top and bottom) with its slender tweezer-like bill is the smallest of Darwin’s finches. The male vermilion flycatcher (centre) is one of the most colourful land birds in the islands.

In writing The Galapagos, one of my missions has been to mix up the natural and the human history of the archipelago. Most other books on the islands tend to dwell on either the rocks, plants and animals at the exclusion of the humans or vice versa. The author creates a single, accessible volume that does both, revealing much of the wonderful natural history but through the first-hand experiences of some of the islands’ most famous visitors (Charles Darwin, Moby-Dick author Herman Melville and naturalist William Beebe).

The book is a reflection of the work of dozens of scientists and conservationists who have dedicated their lives to the Galapagos over the past several decades. At the same time, it says, how the Galapagos matters to those who live there (through the plants, the animals, the humans whose lives depend on it), to Ecuador (whose tourism industry relies on it), to around 1.5 million people around the world (who have had the good fortune to visit) and to everyone else as a model system (for what it might yet teach us).

Review Courtesy: http://www.theguardian.com