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Sir Allen Young (1827-1915), merchant navy officer and experienced Polar explorer, took part in several expeditions before that of the Pandora. As navigator he had accompanied the McClintock expedition to discover the fate of Sir John Franklin, during which he explored several hundred miles of new coastline by sledge. He was also in command of the Fox on the 1860 North Atlantic telegraph expedition to assess the practicality of a cable route between Europe and America across the Faroes, Iceland and Greenland. In 1875, he led, and financed, the British North-West Passage Expedition on the Pandora, and this compelling account of his journey was first published in 1876. In it, he records his attempt to reach the magnetic pole via Baffin Bay and Lancaster Sound, and to navigate the North-West Passage in one season, though he failed in this attempt because of heavy ice in the Franklin Strait.

Spectral analysis is widely used to interpret time series collected in diverse areas. This book covers the statistical theory behind spectral analysis and provides data analysts with the tools needed to transition theory into practice. Actual time series from oceanography, metrology, atmospheric science and other areas are used in running examples throughout, to allow clear comparison of how the various methods address questions of interest. All major nonparametric and parametric spectral analysis techniques are discussed, with emphasis on the multitaper method, both in its original formulation involving Slepian tapers and in a popular alternative using sinusoidal tapers. The authors take a unified approach to quantifying the bandwidth of different nonparametric spectral estimates. An extensive set of exercises allows readers to test their understanding of theory and practical analysis. The time series used as examples and R language code for recreating the analyses of the series are available from the book's website.

A naval officer and man of science, Basil Hall (1788-1844) commanded the brig HMS Lyra as part of Lord Amherst's 1816 embassy to the Qing court in China. While Amherst was engaged on his ultimately abortive venture, the mission's ships visited the west coast of Korea, and then travelled to the island of Okinawa (then known as the Great Loo-Choo Island), where they stayed for several weeks. Little was known about these regions in Britain, and this illustrated account of the journey offered many insights. As well as providing nautical data, such as surveys, soundings and meteorological observations, Hall also comments on geography and culture. A substantial vocabulary and primer on the Okinawan language, compiled by fellow naval officer H. J. Clifford, is included in the appendix. Hall's narratives of his later travels to both North and South America are also reissued in the Cambridge Library Collection.

The explorer and multi-disciplinary scientist Alexander von Humboldt (1769-1859) was a prominent figure in the European scientific community of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and the first to make a scientific survey of South and Central America. His travels alone brought him widespread recognition, but the extensive field notes and research he undertook were developed further on his return. Originally published in French and translated in 1823, this work brought his geological speculations to a British audience. Humboldt explores the positioning of different types of rocks across the globe, and the causes behind these formations. He also hypothesises that the flora of these areas are affected by the geology, which in turn is influenced by the thermal currents of the earth's molten core. These insights into rock formations are also key to Humboldt's theory of continental drift, now recognised as resulting from the shifting of the continental plates.

The original French edition of this book appeared in 1866 as part of Hachette's extensive, popularising Bibliotheque des Merveilles series, which included several science titles by Frederic Zurcher (1816-90) and Elie Margolle (1816-84). Their books were illustrated with attractive wood-cuts, and remained in print until the 1880s; they were also translated into English. This volume was published in London in 1868, and is a good example of popular science publishing in Victorian Britain. The material is organised geographically, beginning in Europe with Vesuvius, Etna and Icelandic volcanoes including Hecla, all of which had recently seen major eruptions. The authors quote from eyewitness accounts, and refer to scholarly publications on volcanoes including Darwin (1844) and Scrope (1862), also reissued in the Cambridge Library Collection. Later chapters describe oceanic volcanoes, the Andes, the volcanic zone of New Zealand's North Island, and recently discovered volcanoes such as Mt Erebus in Antarctica.

Jean-Francois Daubuisson (1769-1841), geologist and engineer, was an Officer of the Legion d'Honneur, Knight of St Louis and Chief Engineer at the Royal Mining Corps. He published numerous papers on geology, mining and hydraulics, and is best known for his textbooks, Traite de geognosie and Traite d'hydraulique. He studied geology and mineralogy in Freiburg with Abraham Werner, the key proponent of Neptunism, the theory that all rocks had an aqueous origin. Later in his career Daubuisson was to side with the Plutonists, who argued that basalts formed from molten rock. However, in this paper, published in French in 1803, he describes his observations of the basalts of Saxony and argues that they, and all basalts, are sedimentary. This English translation by the Secretary of the Wernerian Natural History Society was published in 1814, and provides a fascinating insight into this discredited but once influential theory of the Earth.

Richard Biddle (1796-1847), an American politician and lawyer, published this work on the life of the explorer and cartographer, Sebastian Cabot (c.1481-1557), anonymously in 1831. He was responding to widespread criticisms of Cabot - allegedly an unscrupulous character who played the governments of England and Spain to his own ends. The work includes notes on Sebastian's discoveries on the North American continent along with his father, John, and his search for the North-West Passage. As a governor of the Muscovy Company, Cabot initiated the expansion of English trade to Russia and the East. Cabot's own accounts of his journeys have been lost; therefore, Biddle's research is derived from other sources, particularly the writings of Richard Hakylut (c.1552-1616). This study was recognised at the time as the best review of the history of maritime discovery in the period treated, and prompted further research into the Cabot legacies.

Clement Robert Markham (1830-1916) was a geographer who took part in one of the many Arctic expeditions launched to search for missing explorer John Franklin (1786-1847). This account, published in 1853, was written in response to criticism of the expedition. They had found some evidence of Franklin's route - he had set off in May 1845 to find the North-West Passage - but returned to Britain without any of the survivors. Markham gives a brief history of Arctic exploration, but the majority of the book recounts the expedition's efforts to find Franklin. The crew endured a harsh winter and sailed in iceberg-laden waters along the coast of Greenland, looking for clues of Franklin's whereabouts. They also spent some time exploring the Parry Islands (the present-day Queen Elizabeth Islands). Markham's account of the rescue mission provides insight into the little-known and often dangerous world of Arctic explorers.

This first book by James Croll (1821-90), published in 1875, includes many of the original geophysical theories that he had formulated throughout the early years of his career. A self-educated amateur, Croll obtained work at the Glasgow Andersonian Museum, which gave him leisure time to pursue his scientific interests. The fluidity of scientific disciplines at the time allowed him to virtually invent the field of geophysics, and his unique insights united ideas previously thought unconnected, such as using physics to explore the causes of the glacial epochs, climatic changes and the circulation and temperature of ocean currents. Croll, whose Stellar Evolution and its Relations to Geological Time is also reissued in this series, later became a Fellow of the Royal Society and of St Andrew's University, but (possibly because of his non-scientific background) he writes in a style which makes his works accessible to a lay readership.

In May 1845, the famous Arctic explorer John Franklin (1786-1847) embarked on another attempt to find the elusive North-West Passage. He never returned from this voyage, and was last seen by whalers in Baffin Bay in July 1845. Some thirty rescue missions were launched between 1847 and 1859 to find the missing men. Franklin was not the first explorer to make the dangerous voyage to find the route connecting the Atlantic and Pacific, and journalist Peter Lund Simmonds (1814-97) draws from a wide range of reports and publications about these expeditions in his history of the search for the North-West Passage, published in 1851. The detailed account also includes descriptions of the many missions to find Franklin, and this second edition was published later in the same year as the first in order to include updated reports on the progress of his rescue.

In the nineteenth century, scientists were convinced that the North Pole was free of ice. This myth was fostered since the eighteenth century, when it was thought that ice came from rivers and mainly formed near coasts. Rivers supposedly carried into the north seas a prodigious amount of glacons or 'ice cubes', which formed enormous masses of ice as they accumulated. This misconception led to an inaccurate climate theory that persisted until the beginning of the twentieth century: ice near a country's shores produces bitter cold in that country. This book, published in 1818, links the harsh winters of 1815-17 in England and Europe to the impressive amount of ice encountered at the same time in the Atlantic. The cold was thought to be caused by the break-up and southward drift of Arctic ice. It is attributed to the French meteorologist Antoine Aubriet, who was active in 1815-30.

Scottish artist W. G. Burn Murdoch (1862-1939) joined a whaling expedition to Antarctica that left Dundee in 1892. He was on board the barque Balaena, the largest of the ships in the group, and under the command of Captain Fairweather. They were searching for the valuable Bowhead whale, which had been sighted on Ross' 1839-43 Antarctic expedition. Although unsuccessful at achieving this aim, the ships returned in 1893 loaded with seal pelts. First published in 1894, this is Murdoch's account of the expedition, illustrated throughout with his sketches. He documents each stage of the voyage, and describes living conditions on the Balaena. His illustrations include scenes such as the Ship's departure and ice landscapes, as well as focusing on the daily work of the crew. The Ship's naturalist, William S. Bruce (1867-1921), wrote the final chapter, focusing on the scientific observations he made during the voyage.

In 1841, aged just sixteen, the intrepid young Scotsman Robert M. Ballantyne (1825-94) joined the Hudson's Bay Company. Posted immediately to North-Eastern Canada, he spent five years traversing the region's inhospitable terrain by sleigh and canoe. His journal and letters home were so evocative that, upon his return, he was persuaded to publish an account of his experiences. Combining anthropological observations with descriptions of landscapes, plants, and animals, the account was applauded by the Dundee Courier for 'opening up a mine of information to the curious' and 'describing the everyday life of a novel and singular existence' with 'buoyancy and animation'. Appearing within a year of the first edition in 1848, the second edition reproduced here is illustrated throughout with views and vignettes. 'Free from tedious details and unnecessary wordiness', Ballantyne's fast-moving and readable narrative challenges many misconceptions about nineteenth-century Canada and its indigenous peoples.

Sir Clements Robert Markham (1830-1916) had a lifelong interest in Peru. Having already travelled there in his early twenties, he was commissioned to return ten years later to supervise the collection of sufficient specimens of the cinchona tree for its introduction to India. The bark of the tree yielded quinine, by then a well-known febrifuge and one of the few effective treatments for malaria. This book, originally published in 1862, is Markham's personal account of his travels. His story moves from the misty heights of the Peruvian mountains, where he suffered from altitude sickness, to the Malabar coastline and its complex, remarkable caste system. Markham also includes a detailed history of the use of cinchona bark, both by Europeans and aboriginal Peruvians, and a discussion of Incan culture since the arrival of the Spanish. His work is still a valuable resource for students of scientific and colonial history.

Scottish explorer and author James Baillie Fraser (1783-1856) published this account of his Himalayan journey through Nepal and India in 1820. (His 1826 book describing his travels in the lesser-known provinces of Persia is also reissued in this series.) Part I begins with a historical sketch of Nepal, the reasons for the outbreak of war between Nepal and British India in 1814 and the course and consequences of the war. The remainder of the book describes Fraser's travels through previously inaccessible mountainous areas to Jamunotri and Gangotri, the sources of the rivers Jumna and Ganges. Fraser admits in his preface that he is not an expert in any of the fields which would give his account scientific value, but he offers detailed descriptions of villages, temples and 'grand scenery', and of a people 'as they appeared before an intercourse with Europeans had in any degree changed them'.

Clarke Abel (c.1780-1825) was Chief Medical Officer accompanying Lord Amherst's unsuccessful diplomatic embassy to China in 1816. Encouraged by Sir Joseph Banks, he acted as official naturalist to the expedition, which penetrated further into China than had been possible for previous western visitors. Although most of his large collection of botanical and mineralogical specimens was lost during the return voyage, survivals included several new species, some of which were named after him. This work, published in 1818, made Abel's reputation, and he was elected to the Royal Society the following year. His geological survey of the Cape of Good Hope, studied on the outward journey, is particularly impressive. Abel's account of Chinese society and culture is an important record of a country which was then largely inaccessible to Europeans. An appendix by Robert Brown (Banks' botanist) lists the specimens that survived the shipwreck, which is itself dramatically described.

The British diplomat and writer Laurence Oliphant (1829-88) was the author of travel diaries and novels, including the very successful Piccadilly (1870). A keen traveller, he worked as a correspondent for The Times during the Franco-Prussian War (1870-1) and served as Secretary to British Diplomat Lord Elgin in Canada, China and Japan. This book is a narrative of the journey Oliphant made to Russia as a young man, with his friend Oswald Smith. Its publication in 1853 coincided with the beginning of the Crimean War, turning the book into an immediate success. From the splendour of mid-nineteenth-century St Petersburg, to the annexation of the Crimea, and the international consequences of Russian foreign policy for Europe, this illustrated book is also full of witty anecdotes and captivating descriptions. Very influential in its time, it remains an important resource for cultural and political historians.

Rear-Admiral James Burney (1750-1821), brother of the novelist Fanny Burney and son of the musicologist Dr Charles Burney, is best known for his five-volume compilation of voyages in the Pacific Ocean (also reissued in this series). He began his maritime career at the age of ten, as a captain's servant. Five years later he became a naval officer, and from 1772 to 1780 served on Cook's second and third voyages to the South Seas. Following his forced retirement in 1784, he turned to his second career as an author. Published in 1819, this work summarises nine hundred years of exploration of the coastline from Northern Europe to North-East Asia, from the Norse chieftain Ochter's voyage around the North Cape in 890 CE to Captain Billings' 1790 expedition to the Aleutian Islands. He concludes with a detailed discussion of the search for a passage between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.

The Scottish geologist Sir Roderick Impey Murchison (1792-1871) first proposed the Silurian period after studying ancient rocks in Wales in the 1830s. Naming the sequence after the Silures, a Celtic tribe, he believed that the fossils representing the origins of life could be attributed to this period. This assertion sparked a heated dispute with his contemporary Adam Sedgwick, ultimately ruining their friendship. First published in 1854, Siluria is a significant reworking of Murchison's earlier book, The Silurian System, which had appeared in 1839. Thorough in his approach, he combines his own findings with those of researchers around the world, touching also on the later Devonian, Carboniferous and Permian periods as well as questions of natural history. An important text in nineteenth-century geology and palaeontology, the work contains a valuable geological map of Wales along with detailed engravings of fossils, including crustaceans, cephalopods and fish.

It is a peculiarity of Cambridge that in one of the principal streets, Trumpington Street, there is a runnel of fresh water, called Hobson's Conduit, on either side of the road (a similar stream in St Andrew's Street was covered over in the 1990s.) These streams form part of a system of water supply named after Thomas Hobson (1545-1631), the Cambridge carrier, from whom we get the expression 'Hobson's Choice', and for who the young John Milton wrote two verse epitaphs, reproduced in this work. For 250 years, Hobson's Conduit provided the principal supply of drinking water for the centre of the city, after Andrew Perne (1519-89), Vice-Chancellor of the University, persuaded a number of patrons, including Hobson, to subscribe towards the project. First published in 1938, this history of Cambridge's ancient urban watercourse was written by W. D. Bushell, one of the trustees of the Hobson's Conduit Trust.

This journal, published in 1819 and generally attributed to Alexander Fisher, assistant surgeon of the Alexander, describes Sir John Ross' abortive expedition to search for the North-West Passage. Ross' own report of the voyage (also reissued in this series) was highly controversial, and William Edward Parry (1790-1855), who had commanded the Alexander, was sent by the Admiralty early in 1819 to continue the mission instead of his former superior. Fisher's account, which he insists is 'strictly true', begins with details of the generous provisions and special cold-weather equipment on the ships (including a form of central heating, and wolf-skin blankets issued gratis to all personnel). He vividly describes Baffin Bay, icebergs, and 'dismal' black cliffs, identified by regular compass bearings. Later, the author expresses surprise at Ross' ship turning around and leaving Lancaster Sound, although no land was visible ahead; this incriminating detail may explain Fisher's preference for anonymity.

The geologist Sir Henry Thomas De la Beche (1796-1855) made important contributions as both a surveyor and a theorist. Elected to the Royal Society in 1823, he mapped geological strata in Devon during the 1830s and became the founding director of the British Geological Survey, the world's first national geological survey. In 1847, he was elected president of the Geological Society of London. Reflecting the scope of his scientific knowledge, the present work covers a wide range of topics, including the density of planets, the mineralisation of organic remains, and what could be inferred from the fossils thus created. The book was first published in 1834, the year he became embroiled in an argument with his contemporary Roderick Murchison. Lasting several years, the dispute became known as the 'The Great Devonian Controversy'. De la Beche's Geological Manual (third edition, 1833) has also been reissued in this series.

The antiquary Sir William Gell (1777-1836) was most famous for his two books on the archaeological discoveries at Pompeii (also reissued in this series) but his interest in the topography of classical sites is also reflected in this work, first published in 1823. Gell describes his experiences of many visits to the Peloponnese over a period of twenty years, during which the Greek movement for independence from the Ottoman Empire was gathering momentum and widespread support in Europe. Written partly in response to a request to 'give us anything but your dull maps and measures', the book does not discuss archaeological sites in detail but rather records impressions of the lives of the Greek and Turkish inhabitants in the period immediately before the outbreak of war. Gell's own conclusions about the prospects for 'Grecian liberty' are gloomy: he holds it to be 'quite unattainable at the present day'.

Intended for young men with limited formal education, this manual was the final project of the landscape gardener John Claudius Loudon (1783-1843). Completed by friends, the book appeared posthumously in 1845. The son of a farmer, Loudon was well aware that men who began their careers as gardeners often became the stewards of estates, bailiffs, or tenant farmers later in life, and he provides here some of the mathematical and technical instruction necessary to carry out those roles successfully. Including sections on fractions, geometry, trigonometry, architectural drawing, and the calculation of wages and interest rates, the book traces a remarkable picture for the modern reader of the administrative duties expected of horticultural and agricultural workers in the mid-nineteenth century. Also included are conversion tables, a biography of Loudon, and a short preface by his wife Jane, whose Instructions in Gardening for Ladies (1840) is also reissued in this series.

Matthew Flinders (1774-1814) joined the Royal Navy at fifteen, later claiming to have been inspired by Robinson Crusoe. He served under William Bligh, and charted the Bass Strait in 1798. In 1801 he was commissioned to chart 'New Holland', and so became the first to circumnavigate the island he referred to as Australia. After being shipwrecked on the Barrier Reef and imprisoned for six years on Mauritius on suspicion of spying, he returned to England in 1810 and began work on A Voyage to Terra Australis. He died the day after his book and maps were published. This biography, published in 1914 to mark the centenary of his death, was the first comprehensive study of this central figure of Australian maritime exploration. The leading Australian historian Ernest Scott (1868-1939) based his account on material held in private collections in France as well as on documents deposited in Australian libraries.

Luke Howard (1772-1864) was a pharmacist and businessman, but is most famous for his contributions to meteorology. He classified clouds by their appearance and gave them their modern names of cumulus, cirrus, nimbus and stratus. He was educated at a Quaker school in Oxfordshire, then trained as a pharmacist, but was fascinated by weather throughout his life, and developed into a keen amateur meteorologist. He wrote several important texts on the subject including The Climate of London, an early study in urban climatology, and On the Modification of Clouds (both also reissued in this series). Published in 1837, Seven Lectures on Meteorology covers the components of the atmosphere, seasonal variation in winds and temperature, the use of barometers, cloud structure, and visual phenomena such as rainbows and the Aurora Borealis. This reissue also includes Howard's short 1842 book which details selected British weather data from 1824 to 1841.

Originally published in 1884, this work by the relatively unknown 'gentleman explorer' James Henry Kerry-Nicholls (d. 1888) focuses on nineteenth-century New Zealand. It recounts the journey into what he describes as terra incognita, the area known as the King Country, almost exclusively Maori and little explored by Europeans due to political difficulties and Maori hostility. Travelling with only three horses and what he could carry on them, and accompanied by an interpreter, he endeavoured to cover and accurately record details of an area totalling 10,000 square miles; owing to good contacts, he was even able to meet Maori King Tawhiao. Writing in what now seems an imperialist style, he recounts a history of Maori-European relations, notes potential sites for European settlement, includes geographical surveys and descriptions of the landscapes, and supplies a map which gives the 'most complete chart of the interior of the North Island as yet published'.

Not much is known about the life of William T. Kilgour, apart from the fact that in the late nineteenth century he spent two decades as an irregular member of staff at the meteorological observatory on Ben Nevis. In 1905, a year after the observatory closed due to lack of funds, Kilgour published this account of his experiences, including some of 'the more outstanding incidents inseparable from an existence spent at such an altitude', both as a chronicle of life on the mountain and to encourage the public to support the reopening of the observatory. The text is illustrated with several photographs of the striking natural surroundings as well as images of the meteorologists working and relaxing at the inhospitably located station. The result is an accessible and charming record of scientific life on Britain's highest peak around the turn of the century.

Published in 1847, this is a fascinating account by the Prussian explorer Ludwig Leichhardt of his 3,000-mile expedition from north to south across Australia, from 1844 to 1846. One of the most authoritative early recorders of Australia's environment, Leichhardt was also the best trained naturalist to explore Australia during this time. The expedition departed on 1 October 1844 from Jimbour, the farthest outpost of settlement on the Queensland Darling Downs. Leichhhardt describes in detail the difficulties his party encountered from the very start, the extreme weather conditions they battled, the kindness of the people they met and his close observations of the habits of the aborigines. He also presents detailed analysis of his findings of natural phenomena. After travelling nearly 3,000 miles, Leichhardt arrived in Sydney on 25 March 1846 to a hero's welcome. Engaging and historically revealing, the volume will capture the imagination of the modern reader.

Throughout the nineteenth century, Britain remained hungry for minerals to fuel her industrial and economic growth. Archibald Liversidge (1846-1927) found his knowledge and research to be in high demand. He had studied at the Royal College of Chemistry, and then obtained an exhibition to Cambridge, where he founded the Cambridge University Natural Sciences Club. At just twenty-seven years old Liversidge was appointed Reader in Geology at the University of Sydney, where he revolutionized the study of minerals and their potential applications. First published in 1876, and reprinted here from the enlarged, third edition of 1888, his chemical audit of the minerals of New South Wales became a key text for students of this field. Divided into two sections that address metallic and non-metallic minerals in turn, and incorporating a detailed map and substantial appendix, this work is of enduring interest and importance to geologists, chemists and historians of science.