Several years before Denmark legislated against the Atlantic slave trade in 1792, the government, anticipating the decline of production in the Danish West Indies as a consequence, embarked on a policy of agricultural colonization in West Africa. Peter Thonning, a young natural historian of the highly economic and geographical Linnaean school, spent three formative years in Africa and then for decades administered Denmark's African colonial undertakings. The international movement of colonial news and ideas can very usefully be traced in his unpublished writings, especially among the Guinea Commission's extraordinarily wide-ranging records. These rich archives and contemporary published opinion in this cosmopolitan Scandinavian society open fresh perspectives on the broader history and geography of European colonialism.

Part Seven in the Fishes of the Western North Atlantic series describes the neosopelids (2 genera, 4 species) and lanternfishes (20 genera, 82 species), with an account of Atlantic mesopelagic zoogeography that serves as a model for predicting occurrences of many ocean animals.There are accounts of 86 species in 2 families and 22 genera of bony fishes, among the most abundant of deep oceanic waters, and prime species for the study of oceanic zoogeography and for monitoring and assessment of the oceans. Specialist authorships of its sections include detailed species descriptions with keys, life history and general habits, abundance, range, and relation to human activity, such as economic and sporting importance. The text is written for an audience of amateur and professional ichthyologists, sportsmen, and fishermen, based on new revisions, original research, and critical reviews of existing information. Species are illustrated by exceptional black and white line drawings, accompanied by distribution maps and tables of meristic data.

This book is the second volume of two books about sea urchins (echinoids) since 1953 (Th. Mortensen). The detailed and coloured illustrated descriptions enable the reader to identify all species living today in our oceans. Recent scientific searchings are included. Volume II. describes the Irregularia with bilateral symmetry, including the well known "sand dollars" and "heart urchins", living mostly more or less deeply burrowed in the substrat.