Paradise Revealed: Natural History in Nineteenth-century Australia

In the Australian colonies, early natural historians worked in isolation. Far from the latest in European ideas and books, the collegiality societies, and even fellow colonial practioners, individuals pressed on as best they could with the resources at hand. Their focus was firmly on collection - most of the fruits of which were dispatched 'back home' for others to analyse and evaluate.By the 1850s, however, the picture had changed. A colonial infrastructure of societies and institutions was emerging. Local practioners were beginning to make their own evaluations, and publications with substantial local content were not uncommon. Australian natural history was coming of age. And it would further mature as the controversy over evolutionary theory was fought out.By the turn of the century, with Darwinist principles accepted in schools, teacher education programmes and universities, old-style natural history had been displaced by the new professional discipline of Biology. Focusing on the social relations between Australian naturalists, this study 'provides a window through which the evolution of natural history in Australia may be discerned'.