Sea Cows, Shamans, and Scurvy: Alaska's First Naturalist: Georg Wilhelm Steller
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | 4.17 (710 Votes) |
| Asin | : | 0374399476 |
| Format Type | : | paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 240 Pages |
| Publish Date | : | 2013-01-23 |
| Language | : | English |
DESCRIPTION:
"Delightful read in the vein of similar children's books on Darwin" according to Solaris. I found Sea Cows, Shamans, and Scurvy to be an ideal fit for our little homeschool unit study on explorers, navigation and natural history. We needed a change from tales of American and British explorers and hadn't read much about Siberia previously so this fit the bill. I pick. "Entertaining natural science history" according to Wulfstan. This is a very fun and very education book, written for school-aged children, but suitable for all age. Georg Steller was one of the greatest naturalists of all time, and his discoveries were numerous and awe-inspiring.This fascinating tale is one of hardship and adventure also. Jennifer Simonsen said A fabulous read. Wonderful concise journey into an amazing man's dedication to his research. He wasnot just Alaska's first naturalist, but raised the benchmark for all who followed him.
A number of species carry his name (Steller's jay, Steller's sea lion, Steller's eider, and others), and his descriptions bear witness to the now-extinct sea cow and spectacled cormorant. The text is profusely illustrated with Arnold's quirky line drawings that recall Steller's era. From 1738, when Steller set off overland from Moscow to cross the Ural Mountains and join Bering's Second Kamchatka Expedition, until he died in 1743, he documented Siberian and Alaska plant and animal life and produced a monumental compendium of natural history and human cultures. Steller was a naturalist/doctor who accompanied the explorer Vitus Bering on his vo
Appointed to the expedition in 1737 by the Academy of Science in St. Petersburg, he was sworn to secrecy concerning any discoveries. Officially, Steller was the ship’s mineralogist, but in practice he was its doctor, minister, and naturalist as well. The crew was bound for America on the last leg of an expedition whose mission was to explore, describe, and map Russia’s vast lands from the Ural Mountains across Siberia to the Kamchatka Peninsula, and possibly lay claim to the northwest coast of America – if they could find it, for n