Diane Ackerman celebrates in luxuriant prose the delights of being an "earth ecstatic." The author of A Natural History of the Senses criticizes the changes we have brought to animals and ecosystems as "evolutionary whiz kids." With her inimitable creativity and curiosity, Ackerman swims with monk seals in Hawaii, joins a group of scientists in Brazil trying to restore the golden tamarind to its home in the jungles, and visits a sanctuary for short-tailed albatrosses on a volcanic island south of Tokyo, Japan. Best of all is her loving portrait of magnificent monarch butterflies. Ackerman presents a convincing case that "nature is sacred and must be protected."