Ebook: A rum affair: a true story of botanical fraud

Foreword -- 'A Curious Episode' -- Fields of Inquiry -- The Professor and the Don -- Rumours -- The Plan -- The Forbidden Island -- 'Quoth the Raven . . .' -- 'Is Such a Thing Done?' -- The Aftermath -- Seeds of Doubt -- 'A Total Muddlehead' -- The Matter Subsides -- 'Broken, Lost or Never Collected' -- Epilogue : Two Minor Mysteries.;"In the 1940s, the eminent British botanist John Heslop Harrison proposed a controversial theory: that plants on the islands off the west coast of Scotland had survived the last Ice Age. His premise flew in the face of what most botanists believed--that no plants had survived the 10,000-year period of extreme cold. But Heslop Harrison had proof--the plants and grasses found on the isle of Rum. He didn't anticipate, however, an amateur botanist called John Raven, who boldly questioned whether these grasses were truly indigenous to the area, or whether Heslop Harrison had planted them there himself. This is the story of what happened when a tenacious amateur set out to reveal the truth, and how he uncovered a most extraordinary fraud."--Page 4 of cover.