Insight into universal nature provides an intellectual life? Why are so many plants and animals, especially delight and sense of freedom that no blows of fate and freshwater species, at risk of extinction? These are a few no evil can destroy. of the questions that have intrigued observers of nature Alexander von Humboldt, 1805 and the Earth. By studying the Earth's patterns of life, students of biogeography ultimately ponder some of the ... on that small spot, that little blue and white thing, most basic questions about life and the cosmos. is everything that means anything to you - all of history and music and poetry and art and death and birth and love, tears, joy, games, all of it on that little Historical roots of biogeography spot out there that you can cover with your thumb. The topic of biogeography has its roots in the work of And you realize from that perspective that you've Alexander von Humboldt, the recognized father of plant changed, that there's something new there, that the geography (Detwyler 1969, Browne 1983). From its relationship is no longer what it was.