Natural Marvels

The first significant American contribution to environmental literature was probably William Bartram's straightforwardly titled Travels Through North & South Carolina, Georgia, East & West Florida. Bartram, who both wrote about and drew the creatures he encountered, was a naturalist by heritage; late in life, his father had been appointed King's Botanist in North America, and father and son traveled frequently together. Examples of William's artwork -- he seems to have had a lurid eye for carnivorous plants and snakes with half-swallowed frogs protruding from their mouths -- appear in Voyages of Discovery: A Visual Celebration of Ten of the Greatest Natural History Expeditions, by Tony Rice (Firefly, $39.95). Among other trips covered are two voyages by Capt. Cook; Darwin's immensely fruitful stint on the Beagle; and the 1872-76 Challenger expedition, which carried out soundings and dredgings at oceanic depths never before plumbed. A notable Challenger drawing shows a glass sponge, all bristles and diamond-shaped sections; the art is said to have been " 'reconstructed' from several damaged specimens" collected in the Mediterranean and in South America.

Speaking of frogs, this season's compendium of all things batrachian is called simply Frog, by photographer Thomas Marent with Tom Jackson (DK, $30). If your image of a frog runs to all-green, this book's photographs have some vibrant surprises in store: the poison dart frog, for example, whose legs may be the predictable green but whose trunk is divided into black and yellow segments swaddled in what looks like a gluey brown smear but turns out to be a smattering of newly hatched tadpoles being carried on its parent's back. The aquatic Surninam toad caters even more lavishly to its young: "Up to 100 fertilized eggs are embedded in the skin on their mother's back." The toad pictured in the books looks as if it has been collecting gravel and, being as flat as cardboard, has no place to stow it except on its traylike upper side.

The Encyclopedia of Earth: A Complete Visual Guide (Univ. of California, $39.95) gathers about as many look-sees at the planet, with brief textual explanations, as can comfortably fit in a single volume. Interested in a rock called graywacke (and who wouldn't be)? You'll find a picture of some in the book's "Sedimentary Rock Gallery." Curious as to when India is likely to overtake China as the most populous country on Earth? See the section "Human Population Growth" for the guesstimate: 2050. Want to see hailstones as big as grapefruit? Check out a picture in the section on "Thunderstorms." The book's page-by-page display is so redolent of the Internet that as you read your fingers almost start clicking on an imaginary mouse, and the amount of far-flung material stuffed into this book is staggering.

-- Dennis Drabelle