By the Light of the Glow-Worm Lamp represents some of the best nature writing in over three dozen works from the past three centuries. Includes authors who did not train as scientists (D.H. Lawrence and Vladimir Nabokov). There are zoologists (John James Audubon), conservationists (Rachel Carson), the great classic figures (Charles Darwin and J.H. Fabre), and well-known contemporary writers (Diane Ackerman, Annie Dillard, and Barry Lopez). A cornucopia of the marvelous and the earthbound.
Introduction
Landscape
The Falkland Islands (Charles Darwin)
La Pampa (R.B. Cunninghame Graham)
The Atlantic Forest (Thomas Belt)
The Falls of Niagara (Anonymous)
Fauna and Flora of Nevada (Mark Twain)
Shooting the Rapids in a Batteau (Henry David Thoreau)
Heavenly Place (Priscilla Wakefield)
Three Natural Disasters (John James Audubon)
Hoyle's Mouth (Philip Henry Gosse)
Prophetic Autumn (Grant Allen)
A Ramble in May (Charles A. Hall)
An October Diary (Charles C. Abbot)
The Encantadas (Herman Melville)
Nightwatch (Annie Dillard)
Crusoe's Island (Daniel Defoe)
Journal 1866 (Gerard Manley Hopkins)
Flowery Tuscany (D.H. Lawrence)
The Marginal World (Rachel Carson)
Birds
Into the Amazon (Charles Waterton)
Birds of Siberia (Henry Seebohm)
The Wild Geese of Wyndygoul (Ernest Thompson Seton)
The Crows (Richard Jeffries)
Why Birds Sing (Jacques Delamain)
Bird Lists (John Clare)
Bird Watching (Edmund Selous)
The Temples of the Hills (W. H. Hudson)
King Penguins (Diane Ackerman)
Beasts
The Cat (Edward Topsell)
Real Life of the Beaver (John Timbs)
The Bonte-Quagga (Theodore Roosevelt and Edmund Heller)
The Narwhal (Barry Lopez)
Monkeys (G.D. Hale Carpenter)
Insects and Fish
Three Strokes of a Dagger (J.H. Fabre)
The secret of the Formicary (Maurice Maeterlinck)
Butterflies (Vladimir Nabokov)
12,000,000 Cod (Gustov Eckstein)
Common Fish of an Indian Garden (D.D. Cunningham)
Stars of the Earth (L.M. Budgen)