The life, travels and scientific achievements of Armand David, lazarist missionary, naturalist, botanist, zoologist and ecologist before the time of ecology. Born in the french "Pays basque », lover of nature since his childhood, he becomes a priest and a believer of Darwin's theories, assuming gracefully his contradictions. Hired through his religious hierachy by the Museum of Natural History of Paris he goes to China and explore the flora and animal life and bring specimens, Armand David spends eleven years there, in the second part of the nineteenth century, a very difficult and dangerous period time in China for foreigners. Among his best known achievements, the discovery in a Beijing park where the chinese emperors used to go hunting, of a strange kind of deer later called the "Deer of Father David". He also introduced the giant panda to the occidental world and brought to Europe and America many of our familiar plants and trees. ...
