During the golden age of science, in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, there was a dedicated drive to accurately categorise nature and explain the natural world. Many enthusiastic naturalists, amateur and professional, set off to collect and classify plants and animals across the New World, and many of these finds still bear the names of those who discovered them today.

The Noble Quest, previously Sightseers & Scholars: Scientific Travellers in the Golden Age of Discovery, features a new introduction that considers the growing catastrophic trend in species extinction today. The nine important individuals featured in the book encompass early naturalists William Bartram and Alexander von Humboldt; inquisitive aristocrats Charles Waterton and Prince Maximilian of Wied; professional collectors David Douglas, John Kirk Townsend and John Richardson; and last field naturalists Henry Walter Bates and John Wesley Powell. All faced great adventures and hardship, as they undertook their groundbreaking work.