Abstract
WE have read Mr. Rodway's book with a good deal of pleasure. Such a subject as the struggle for existence amongst the animals and plants of the Tropics, could not fail to be full of interest when dealt with by an enthusiastic lover of nature. For it is in the Tropics that nature's principal workshops are situated, and no naturalist can afford, nowadays, to neglect that essential element in a liberal biological education—a visit to these regions. There the struggle for life is no longer, as in our own climates, a coldblooded process which only a trained eye can follow, but a fiercely active competition for the means of subsistence which is everywhere apparent in every detail of the structure of the individual and of the economy of the species. The “heartless vegetable” amid such surroundings seems no longer a reality, but the cold figment of a northern imagination.
In the Guiana Forest. Studies of Nature in Relation to the Struggle for Life.
By James Rodway With an Introduction by Grant Allen. Illustrated. (London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1894.)
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In the Guiana Forest Studies of Nature in Relation to the Struggle for Life. Nature 51, 387 (1895). https://doi.org/10.1038/051387a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/051387a0