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 The Song of the Dodo: Island Biogeography in an Age of Extinctions
by David Quammen"A stunning work of scientific reporting and travel writing. Quammen's intelligence is so dependable, his narrative witty, compelling, acutely aware."
--Barry Lopez "Hugely satisfying. The writing is muscular and playful, imaginative and analytical, wrenching and sanguine. Every jargon-bound scientist should sleep with a copy under the pillow."
--E. Annie Proulx "Let's start indoors. Let's start by imagining a fine Persian carpet and a hunting knife. The carpet is twelve feet by eighteen, say. That gives us 216 square feet of continuous woven material. Is the knife razor-sharp? If not, we hone it. We set about cutting the carpet into thirty-six equal pieces, each one a rectangle, two feet by three. Never mind the hardwood floor. The severing fibers release small tweaky noises, like the muted yelps of outraged Persian weavers. Never mind the weavers. When we're finished cutting, we measure the individual pieces, total them up - and find that, lo, there's still nearly 216 square feet of recognizable carpetlike stuff. But what does it amount to? Have we got thirty-six nice Persian throw rugs? No. All we're left with is three dozen ragged fragments, each one worthless and commencing to come apart. Now take the same logic outdoors and it begins to explain why the tiger, Panthera tigris, has disappeared from the island of Bali. It casts light on the fact that the red fox, Vulpes vulpes, is missing from Bryce Canyon National Park. It suggests why the jaguar, the puma, and forty-five species of birds have been extirpated from a place called Barro Colorado Island - and why myriad other creatures are mysteriously absent from myriad other sites. An ecosystem is a tapestry of species and relationships. Chop away a section, isolate that section, and there arises the problem of unraveling."  Paperback 702 pages - 6 1/2" x 9 1/2" - (4/96)
ZN0837 The Song of the Dodo: Island Biogeography in an A $20.00
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