Reading the Landscape: An Adventure in Ecology
Front cover. Click to see more.
May Theilgaard Watts (1893-1975). Reading the Landscape: An Adventure in Ecology. New York: Macmillan, 1957.
x, 230 p. illus. 22cm.
The Sterling Morton Library of the Morton Arboretum, QK940.W3
In this unassuming book of short essays and drawings, May Watts introduced the idea of ecology to a broader audience. It tells the stories of various American landscapes and their environmental changes over time. Since its publication in 1957, it has endured as required reading for any study of environmental sciences.
The preface contains an eloquent definition of ecology
x, 230 p. illus. 22cm.
The Sterling Morton Library of the Morton Arboretum, QK940.W3
In this unassuming book of short essays and drawings, May Watts introduced the idea of ecology to a broader audience. It tells the stories of various American landscapes and their environmental changes over time. Since its publication in 1957, it has endured as required reading for any study of environmental sciences.
The preface contains an eloquent definition of ecology
There is good reading on the land, first-hand reading, involving no symbols.
The records are written in forests in fencerows, in bogs, in playgrounds, in pastures, in gardens, in canyons, in tree
rings.
The records were made by sun and shade, by wind, rain and fire, by time; and by animals.
As we read what is written on the land, finding accounts of the past, preidictions of the future, and comments on the present,
we discover that there are many interwoven strands to each story, offering several possible interpretations.
Interpreting this reading matter, in place, on the land, seeing living things in their total environments, is an adventure into the field that is called ecology.
This particular copy is signed by Watts and dedicated "with love" to her pupils at the Morton Arboretum.