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Charles Waterton (1782-1865) n a true English eccentric, ironically self-styled 'the most commonplace of men'. He talked to insects, fought with snakes, rode an alligator and lived like a monk. He was made famous in his own lifetime by publication of hiswide-ranging travels and natural history observations - always fun, often perceptive, and unfailingly individual. One of his more notable contributions to science was the introduction into Europe of curare, now an invaluable drug in surgical operations. He turned his family estate into an extensive nature reserve; long before such things were heard of, and threw open his gates to the local populace as long as they understood that birds and an...
"From 1782 to 1865 there lived, mainly at Walton Hall in the county of Yorkshire in England, a man whose name was Charles Waterton. He was the Last Great Eccentric. Squire Waterton was also a farmer, a naturalist, and such a traveler as only an Englishman can be. His whole life made a pattern of odd adventure, some of whose highlights were his encounters with a boa constrictor, which he disposed of by a punch to the jaw; with a crocodile, which he rode up and down the Essequibo River; and with an unfortunate donkey. which he first poisoned experimentally with curare and then revived by means of a bellows..." -- Book Jacket.
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Charles Waterton was the first conservationist who fought to protect wild nature against the destruction and pollution of Victorian industrialisation. During his lifetime he was famous for his eccentricities, but also for his achievements and his opinions. A Yorkshire landowner, he turned his park into a sanctuary for animals and birds. As an explorer he learned to survive in the tropical rain forests of South America without a gun or the society of other white men. He was an authority on the poisons used by South American Indians and a taxidermist of note. The huge public that read his books included Dickens, Darwin and Roosevelt. Since his death the memory of Waterton's personal eccenticities has flourished, while the originality of his ideas and work has often suffered. Using his surviving papers, Julia Blackburn has redressed the balance in a biogr aphy that restores Waterton to his place as the first conservationist of the modern age.
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