EDGAR AUBERT DE LA RUE, FRANCOIS BOURLIERE AND JEAN-PAUL HARROY - The Tropics

Great Britain, George G. Harrap, 1958. Reprint, Binding: Cloth, Fine/Fine. 4to - over 9¾" - 12" tall Hadrback Hardback. In a fine slip case. This volume describes in words and picture the prodigious richness, the complexity, and the extraordinary adaptions, of the tropical flora. The many beautiful illustrations give examples of the more typical and striking aspects of the infinity of graceful, bizarre, and monstrous forms that the plant kingdom has assembled in the tropics. These include huge flowers, exotix orchids, and weid plants that live on insect life. Contrasts in climate, altitude, and soil are extreme, ranging from equotorial rain forests, to park-life savannahs, deciduous forests, thorny scrubs, and finally to desert steppes. For the sake of clairty an attempt has been made to divide the nuermous types of vegetation into four groups. To complete the description of the tropical world the main characteristics of animal life has been included. Finally, an examination is made of man's devastations in the tropical world: the decimation od animal and bird life, destruction of the forests and the effects of erosion. The three authors are acknowleged experts. With eighty photogravure plates, sixteen coloured plates with thirty-four colour photographs, and text illustrations. 208 pp.