This acclaimed study of the history of scientific exploration in the Southwest from renowned biologist Dr. Samuel Wood Geiser, first published in its present revised edition in 1948, would be of interest to many types of readers: For those who love stories, of adventure and struggle, it narrates the lives and varying fates of men who lived under strange and difficult conditions, and who met those conditions, some with heroic resolution and resourcefulness, some with fainting and failure, many with a mixture of both. These lives are presented, not in the style of the popular semi-fiction of the day, but with such accuracy as only a thorough study of many sorts of records makes possible; yet, too, with sympathy and insight into human nature throughout. For those interested in, frontier life and frontier stories this book presents an unwonted aspect of that life: the struggle for culture and for science under frontier conditions: a struggle no less heroic than that of the fighting pioneer. Naturalists of the Frontier realistically portrays the hard material conditions of frontier life, yet these are illumined by the ideals of the men who subdued those conditions. The student of the early history of the Southwest, and particularly of Texas, will find here presented unusual and significant aspects of that history. For the historian of science this book pictures the beginnings of science in a new country; it shows what science must be under frontier conditions—an examination of the resources of the region, rather than a study of underlying problems.

Table of contents: The naturalist on the frontier.--Jacob Boll.--In defense of Jean Louis Berlandier.--Thomas Drummond.--Audubon in Texas.--Louis Cachand Ervendberg.--Ferdinand Jakob Lindheimer.--Ferdinand Roemer and his travels in Texas.--Charles Wright.--Gideon Lincecum.--Julien Reverchon.--Gustaf Wilhelm Belfrage.--Notes on scientists of the first frontier.--Principal sources of the foregoing chapters (p. 264-269)--A partial list of naturalists and collectors in Texas, 1820-1880.--Incomplete list of the author's publications on the history of science in early Texas (p. 285-288).

"In California's Frontier Naturalists, Richard Beidleman has eloquently chronicled the history of explorations and discovery that revealed the grand legacy of California's biodiversity. More than just a series of scholarly essays about naturalists, collections, and species, this book provides lively insight into the motivation that lured diverse naturalists to California's 'natural cornucopia', their personalities, their remarkable experiences, and their lasting contributions."—Dieter Wilken, Santa Barbara Botanic Garden