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Review: Maraca explored

Mm — Fri, 16 Jul 1993 23:00:00 +0000

Self-portrait by a herpetologist: Mark O’Shea, with an egg-sucker snake,
snapped himself on a recent expedition to explore Maraca, a rainforest
island in Brazil. Written by two members of the expedition, John Hemming
(director of the Royal Geographical Society, London) and James Ratter, a
botanist from the Royal Botanic Garden, Edinburgh, the book is far more than
a list of species and some beautiful photographs. They write entertainingly
of the difficulties and pleasures of studying a marginal rainforest area.

Review: An aerial view of Britain’s past

Mm — Sat, 05 Dec 1992 00:00:00 +0000

Snow over Leicestershire reveals the deep tracks of medieval ploughshares,
a distinctive pattern of ridges and furrows that has survived in pasture
lands. This picture appears in Historic Landscapes of Britain, edited by
Robin Glasscock (pp 256, $59.95/ £29.95). It is the third, and last,
volume in a series on the geography of Britain, based mainly on photographs
by the Cambridge Air Survey.

Contributors point out the difficulties of interpretation: heavy soils
in the Midlands retained marks from medieval ploughing, lighter soils elsewhere
did not. Aerial views cannot completely recapture the development of the
landscape of Britain, but much has been discovered.

Historic Landscapes also includes industrial and urban developments
from the Victorian slum clearances of London’s East End to lead mining in
County Durham. A fascinating and thoughtful account of how the use of land
has shaped its face.

Review: From the Volga to far Kamchatka

Mm — Sat, 31 Oct 1992 00:00:00 +0000

As the Soviet Union dissolved into its constituent countries, foreigners
poured in. Realms of the Russian Bear by John Sparks (BBC Books, pp 288,
£18.95) records one of the happier invasions, naturalists observing
species and habitats from volcanic Kamchatka with its brown bears and auklets
to the Volga delta’s lavish display of birds.

The Nature of Russia by John Massey Stewart (Boxtree, pp 192, £18.99)
covers the six main climatic regions too, but also considers the relationship
between the indigenous people and the wildlife. The pictures in both books
are wonderful: from a Russian Desman – an aquatic relative of the mole –
whiffling its elephantine snout to a lounging snow leopard. But the loss
of central control endangers some species: a 30-year contract between a
Soviet corporation and Hyundai of South Korea allows felling of 800 000
cubic metres of timber, which will denude the upper part of the Peya river
basin and pollute the rivers of the reserve sheltering the Siberian tiger
and the scaley-sided merganser, one of the world’s rarest wildfowl.

Arts / Exhibition of West African brasses and bronzes at the British Museum

Mm — Fri, 02 Aug 1991 23:00:00 +0000

For a practical example of how science, art and archaeology sit happily
together, visit a small exhibition of the brasses and bronzes of West Africa
at the British Museum, Great Russell Street, London WC₁. Man
and Metal in Ancient Nigeria is on until 1 September. Entrance to the exhibition
– and the museum itself – is free.

The collection of metal heads and figures include the familiar cast
bronze heads of rulers, made from clay models coated in wax that is then
covered by an outer case of clay. Baking the clay moulds melts the wax.
Molten bronze is then poured into the gaps. The smiths then ornamented the
surface of the cast objects. A rare model of a 16th-century European mercenary
soldier is on display, as well as animals, such as the king’s leopard drinking
vessel (right), and birds. The bronzes are accompanied by details of the
metal working techniques that the metalsmiths of Igbo-Ukwe, Ife and Benin
used in the 15th and 16th century.

The British Museum recently funded an investigation in Nigeria into
the sources of the ores that made up the bronze. The exhibition ends with
a brief exploration of ancient mining techniques compared with modern small-scale
methods of processing metal ore.