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Charles Tucker Musson was a highly respected teacher at Hawkesbury Agricultural College from 1891 to 1919 and a prolific contributor of articles to scientific and other journals in New South Wales. In addition, he became a strong advocate of Nature Study, a subject widely discussed as it was introduced to schools throughout the English-speaking world in the early twentieth century but since fallen into obscurity within historical research. Musson's understandings of ecology and adaptation promoted a holistic study of nature. For him any action that affected the natural environment had wider implications that needed to be understood. He came to believe that environmental understanding required more than factual scientific investigation and thus embraced the additional appeal to emotional attachment and aesthetic appreciation that Nature Study endorsed. A study of his life and writing thus provides insight into the particular ideology of Nature Study as it was introduced into New South Wales schools and its wider connection with conservationist and preservationist thought. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

New research is presented on the life of James before his emigration to Australia in 1840. Though fragmentary and incomplete the results show Rennie as a naturalist of considerable standing and of literary and scientific skill. This new information illustrates an intriguingly marginal life in science of the period. On his personal character caution is exercised, although a thread of dogmatism, determination and self assurance, bordering on arrogance, can be traced from his student days until his departure from Britain. Rennie's early unpublished essays clearly point to his potential as a scientific writer. Rennie's final 27 years in Australia are not covered in any detail because of the lack of documentation about this relatively unknown period of his life outside Britain. A bibliography of his published and unpublished works is given as an appendix, together with notes and new insights into attribution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]