ULENDO: Travels of a Naturalist In and Out of Africa

Its time,"" says Archie Carr, ""to start ransacking the earth for the little landscapes that need saving."" With such singularly commonplace words, set down in the middle of his third chapter, this obviously enchanted professor begins his offbeat and guiling plea for ecological conservation, at home as well as abroad. Ulendo, the non-immolatory counterpart of safari, appropriately describes Carr's occupation whether practiced in Kenya, Africa or Kissimmee, Florida. Carr's writing is as rich as his research is specific. Following the alliterative tracery of Carr's words on the page, it doesn't matter that his readers will never have seen a jungle snake, a buff-back cattle egret or that they may be bemused by the limnological consequences of inter-pluvial speciation in cichlid fishes. It's all very character (and vocabulary) building.