The first person to identify harvest mice ( Micromys minutus), Gilbert White was an eighteenth-century English curate and naturalist who has been called the 'father of ecology'. Yet records from his student days show that he was not so much a quiet country gentleman as a lad about town, losing money at cards and buying fancy waistcoats. In her grandly illustrated book A Year with Gilbert White, historian Jenny Uglow looks between these extremes to investigate who White really was.
Joris Hoefnagel created The Four Elements, a multi-volume collection with over 300 watercolor renderings showcasing insects and other natural specimens with remarkable detail and accuracy.