The essential naturalist : timeless readings in natural history / edited by Michael H. Graham, Joan Parker, and Paul K. Dayton.

Chicago ; London : University of Chicago Press, 2011.

xiii, 534 pages : illustrations ; 23 cm

Includes bibliographical references.

A foundation built by giants / Michael H. Graham -- Inspiration / Robert T. Paine. The great horned owl (1927) / Edward H. Forbush ; Just tigers (1944) / Jim Corbett ; Looking back (1944) / Jim Corbett ; Foreword to The salamanders of the family Plethodontidae (1926) / Emmett R. Dunn ; The wisdom of instinct (1918) / Jean Henri Fabre ; The wolf spiders (1954) / John Crompton (pseudonym of John Battersby Crompton Lamburn) ; Contour diving (1934) / William Beebe ; The winter journey (1930) / Apsley Cherry-Garrard ; Wombats (1963) / Peter J. Nicholson ; Journey to the sea (1941) / Rachel L. Carson ; Notes on the natural history of some marine animals (1938) / George E. MacGinitie -- Exploration / Gage H. Dayton, Paul K. Dayton, and Harry W. Greene. Inaccessible Island and Nightingale Island (1879) / Henry N. Moseley ; The Islands Galapagos (1697) / William Dampier ; The sea otter and the sea cow (1741-1742) / Georg W. Steller ; Chapters from the Life-histories of Texas reptiles and amphibians (1926) / John Kern Strecker ; Account of the electrical eels, and the method of catching them in South America by means of wild horses (1820) / Alexander von Humboldt ; Comments on the cephalopods found in the stomach of a sperm whale (1913/1914) / Prince Albert I of Monaco ; On collecting at Cape Royds (1910) / James Murray ; A submarine gully in Wembury Bay, South Devon (1934) / John A. Kitching, T.T. Macan, and H. Cary Gilson ; A briefe and true report of the newfoundland of Virginia (1588) / Thomas Hariot -- Initiation / Nancy Knowlton. Home range and mobility of brush rabbits in California chaparral (1954) / Joseph H. Connell ; Food recognition and predation on opistobranchs by Navanax inermis (1963) / Robert T. Paine ; Variation and adaptation in the imported fire ant (1951) / Edward O. Wilson ; Storm mortality in a winter starling roost (1939) / Eugene P. Odum and Frank A. Pitelka ; The dispersal of insects to Spitsbergen (1925) / Charles S. Elton ; A tenderfoot explorer in New Guinea (1932) / Ernst Mayr ; On the occurrence of Trichocorixa kirkaldy (Corixidae, Hemiptera-Heteroptera) in salt water and its zoo-geo-graphical significance (1931) / G. Evelyn Hutchinson ; Ecological compatibility of bird species on islands (1966) / Peter R. Grant ; Bivalves : spatial and size-frequency distributions of two intertidal species (1968) / Jeremy B.C. Jackson -- Intuition / Shahid Naeem. The structure and habits of birds (1244-1250) / Frederick II of Hohenstaufen ; Of the spider (1800) / Antony van Leeuwenhoek ; Observations relating to the history of bees (1758) / Jan Swammerdam ; History of a mussel bed : observations on a phase of faunal disequilibrium (1935) / Edouard Fischer-Piette ; On a provisional hypothesis of saltatory evolution (1877) / William H. Dall -- On the natural history of the Aru Islands (1857) / Alfred Russel Wallace ; Evolutionary criteria in Thallophytes : a radical alternative (1968) / Lynn Margulis ; Observations and experiments upon the freshwater polypus (1742) / Abraham Trembley ; On the causes of zoning of brown seaweeds on the seashore [1] (1909) / Sarah M. Baker ; On the causes of zoning of brown seaweeds on the seashore. 2, The effect of periodic exposure on the expulsion of gametes and on the germination of the oospore (1910) / Sarah M. Baker ; The chalk grasslands of Hampshire-Sussex border : the effects of rabbits (1925) / Alfred G. Tansley and Robert S. Adamson ; The biosphere and the noösphere (1945) ; Vladimir J. Vernadsky -- Unification / Peter R. Grant. The natural history of Selborne (1813) / Gilbert White ; Maupertuis, pioneer of genetics and evolution (1959) / Bentley Glass ; On the various contrivances by which orchids are fertilized by insects (1862) / Charles Darwin ; Lepidoptera: Heliconidae (1861) / Henry W. Bates ; Vertebrata: Aves: Drepanidae (1903) / Robert C.L. Perkins ; Geography and evolution in the pocket gopher (1927) / Joseph Grinnell ; Coevolution of mutualism between ants and acacias in Central America (1966) / Daniel H. Janzen.