Faith in a Seed: The Dispersion Of Seeds And Other Late Natural...

Features

• Cover Type: Paperback with 301 pages
• Published by: Island Press April 1, 1996
• Written in: English
• ISBN 10 Number: 1559631821
• ISBN 13 Number: 978-1559631822
• Book Dimensions: 8.8 x 6.6 x 0.8 inches
• Weighs: 1 pounds

From Publishers Weekly
Dean, the editor of the Thoreau Society Bulletin, has culled essays from the notebooks Thoreau left behind at his death, works that illuminate the scientific side of the pioneering naturalist.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
For Thoreauvians, botanists, agriculturalists, and scholars of 19th-century America, this book represents nothing less than a triumph of editorial skill and integrity over conventional wisdom. A study of plant ecology using Darwinian theory, Faith in a Seed is one of the more interesting books published in our time, so felicitously does it give readers a fresh dose of all that makes Thoreau such a major figure in American letters. The holograph of The Dispersion of Seeds , Thoreau's last major project (as well as the manuscript of Wild Fruits, selections of which appear here along with two other writings probably intended for the title volume) was dismissed by most of the scholars who even knew of it as being taxonomically suspect, uninterestingly concrete, and "best left unpublished." How wrong. It is, in fact, the book that latter-day Thoreau admirers have often wished he had written: sensual, acute, intricate, and altogether fascinating, a text that should cause scholars to reevaluate their assessment of an important writer. A fundamental acquisition for all collections.
- Mark L. Shelton, Athens, Ohio
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Reader Reviews
This book contains the manuscript of one of Thoreau's last works, The Dispersion of Seeds. Through his daily walks in the woods, Thoreau became fascinated with the question of how the plants he was seeing became established. A puzzling riddle of the time that local townsmen constantly asked was why when they cut pine forests, oak forests seemed to grow up, and when they cut oak forests, pine forests would take their place. Thoreau was uniquely able to answer such questions, since he had spent years wandering through the forests, taking notes on everything he saw. In this volume, he not only provides answers to the pine-oak riddle, but he also lays to rest the idea of spontaneous generation of plants, which was still accepted in many circles at the time he wrote this book. This book represents perhaps some of Thoreau's greatest works in ecology. In it, he lays out his own theory of forest succession based on ecological observation and experimentation. He was one of the first to understand forest succession on the American continent, working almost entirely alone, with little previous research in the literature to draw on. Not only is the book a magnificent ecological study, but the text itself is sheer pleasure to read, being a prime example of Thoreau's well-crafted prose.