The Man Who Ate the Zoo: Frank Buckland, forgotten hero of natural history
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By Richard Girling
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A lively and fascinating biography of Frank Buckland, `the forgotten man of Victorian science’, surgeon, natural historian, bestselling writer and early conservationist – an eccentric giant of his time
Frank Buckland was an extraordinary man – surgeon, naturalist, veterinarian, popular lecturer, bestselling writer, museum curator, and a conservationist before the concept even existed.
Eccentric, revolutionary, prolific, he was one of the nineteenth century’s most improbable geniuses. His life-long passion was to discover new ways to feed the hungry. Rhinoceros, crocodile, puppy-dog, giraffe, kangaroo, bear and panther all had their chance to impress, but what finally – and, eventually, fatally – obsessed him was fish. He can justly be regarded as the godfather of fish-farming and the progenitor of marine research and fishery protection. Forgotten now, he was one of the most original, far-sighted and influential natural scientists of his time, held as high in public esteem as his great philosophical enemy, Charles Darwin.
The Man Who Ate the Zoo is both a rollicking yarn – engaging, funny and provocative – and a celebration of the great age of natural science, one man’s genius and what, even now, can be learned from him.
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