Reviewed by Robert CarverYALE UNIVERSITY PRESS, 336pp, £25Tablet bookshop price £22.50            Tel 01420 592974From “that Old Pyrating Dog”, William Dampier, the self-taught botanist and world-circumnavigating buccaneer, to Charles Darwin, the diffident country gentleman and Cambridge theology student destined, he thought, “for a quiet country rectory”, the course of modern natural history has been closely linked to ambitious voyages of exploration during the eighteenth century to the Pacific, South America, Africa and Asia. Some of these adventurers are well known – Joseph Banks, who went with Captain Cook to the South Seas, and Matthew Flinders, who explored South Australia. Others, such