1. For example, early portrayals of the prairies of Nebraska, Kansas, and Oklahoma, east of the Rocky Mountains, as the “Great American Desert” were conditioned by pre-nineteenth-century western European experience of treeless country as unproductive and unsuitable for agriculture. See, D. W. Meinig, The Shaping of America: A Geographical Perspective on 500 Years of History, vol. 2, Continental America, 1800–1867 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1993), 75–77. This point is also illustrated in nineteenth-century Australian natural history journals, as well as in the publications of colonial acclimatization societies. Acclimatization societies and zoological and botanical gardens across the British Empire swapped flora and fauna in the interest of improving prosperity and productivity, beautifying colonial environments, and recreating the landscapes of home.
2. See Christopher Lever, They Dined on Eland: The Story of the Acclimatisation Societies (London: Quiller Press, 1992).
3. Gary D. Libecap and Zeynep Kocabiyik Hansen, “‘Rain Follows the Plow’ and Dryfarming Doctrine: The Climate Information Problem and Homestead Failure in the Upper Great Plains, 1890–1925,” Journal of Economic History 62, no. 1 (2002): 87–88.
4. For example, Martin Rudwick, “Geological Travel and Theoretical Innovation: The Role of ‘Liminal’ Experience,” Social Studies of Science 26, Historic paper (1996 [1978]): 143–59;
5. George Seddon, “Thinking Like a Geologist: The Culture of Geology,” Mawson Lecture, Australian Journal of Earth Sciences 43 (1996): 487–95;