American Women Afield: Writings by Pioneering Women Naturalists

The 20th in Texas A&M's Louise Lindsey Merrick Natural Environmental Series and a companion to Bonta's Women in the Field, this book highlights the works of 25 women naturalists whose writing is as noteworthy for its scientific insight as for its feminine perspective. Over a century before such writers as Rachel Carson would put pen to paper and influence a new generation of women naturalists, 19th-century writers Susan Fenimore Cooper, Mary Treat and Althea Sherman wrote as if to prove once and for all that Thoreau and his male cohorts were not alone in their desire to study and preserve the natural resources disappearing around them. Cooper's Rural Hours and Treat's Home Studies in Nature, both excerpted here, preserve in beautifully written passages glimpses of many plants and birds long since extinct. In ``Ecology and World War I,'' an excerpt from her Adventures in Ecology, Edith Clements recounts her career as a naturalist. That Clements most often worked alongside and in the shadow of her husband, acclaimed plant ecologist Frederic Clements, takes nothing from her prose. Bonta includes biographical entries and bibliographies for each author, ensuring that naturalists for years to come may learn something of their forgotten heritage. Photos not seen by PW. (Feb.)