Arthropods are invertebrates that constitute over 90% of the animal kingdom, and their bio-ecology is closely linked with global functioning and survival. Arthropods play an important role in maintaining the health of ecosystems, provide livelihoods and nutrition to human communities, and are important indicators of environmental change. Yet the population trends of several arthropods specie…
Recruited straight from university, Ernest Satow (1843–1929) became one of the most respected British diplomats, particularly in Japan, where he is still remembered. After a career spent mostly in the rapidly developing Far East, he retired in 1906. Just before the outbreak of war, he was asked to compile a work on international diplomacy, and 'Satow', as it has become known, was first publis…
The late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries witnessed a revolution in the eating habits of European households with disposable incomes. Central to the culinary history of the period is the innovative French chef Georges Auguste Escoffier (1846–1935). His cooking methods, combined with a modern approach to managing professional kitchen staff, contributed to the development of a fashionab…
Oliver Pamp analyzes the likelihood and extent of pension reforms from a political-economy perspective. It is shown that voters’ preferences for or against reforms are influenced by a societies’ demographic development, the generosity of its existing public pension scheme and its electoral system. The author extensively reviews existing formal models of pension systems, discusses their meri…
Recruited straight from university, Ernest Satow (1843–1929) became one of the most respected British diplomats, particularly in Japan, where he is still remembered. After a career spent mostly in the rapidly developing Far East, he retired in 1906. Just before the outbreak of war, he was asked to compile a work on international diplomacy, and 'Satow', as it has become known, was first publis…
James MacQueen (1778–1870) was a British geographer and also one of the most outspoken critics of the methods of the British anti-slavery campaign in the 1820s and 1830s. Although he never visited Africa, he became an acknowledged expert on the continent, through reading all available accounts, ancient and modern, as well as interviewing slave merchants while managing a sugar plantation in th…
James MacQueen (1778–1870) was a British geographer fascinated by the problem of the River Niger. He set out to try to establish (on the basis of accounts by explorers, traders and missionaries), that one and the same river flowed continuously through Africa and into the Atlantic Ocean, thus challenging long-established beliefs that African rivers either disappeared into the sand or terminate…
Jane Ellen Panton (1847–1923) was the second daughter of the artist William Powell Frith, and an expert on domestic issues. First published in 1896, this is her guide to creating the 'dream house'. In it she draws on the experiences of Deborah and Dick, clients who sought her advice after looking unsuccessfully for a suitable home. The book is based on the notion that turning an existing buil…
The jurist Sir James Fitzjames Stephen (1829–94) published this work in 1863 to provide the intelligent layman with a general account of the workings and principles of English criminal law. He begins with a brief sketch of the development of that law from the Anglo-Saxon period onwards. He then covers the current law on criminal responsibility and the classification and definition of specific…
H. Rider Haggard (1856–1925) is best known as the successful writer of adventure stories with exotic backgrounds such as King Solomon's Mines. However, he also served on a number of royal commissions, and in managing his wife's Norfolk estate became a recognised expert on agricultural matters. His A Farmer's Year (1898, also reissued in this series), recounts the work of the farm, together wi…