The geographers have arrived. In the last decade, the history of science has experienced a benign invasion of cultural-historical geographers (including, for example, a fine special issue of this esteemed periodical in 2005). The publication of this brace of volumes from the growing Science and Culture in the Nineteenth Century series is a culmination of a decade of scholarship in this area. The authors inherit and develop the 1990s contextualist history of Victorian science (Bernard Lightman, who edits this series, has played an important role in both areas) and both give us a rich understanding not only of where but also of how Victorian science was practised.

To say this is by no means to obscure, however, the considerable differences between these two volumes, each important and interesting in its own way. Finnegan's is a measured study of Scottish natural-history societies, exploring science's cultural role in Victorian society. Naylor, meanwhile, does not concentrate on a country but rather presents the scientific biography of a county, Cornwall, with a larger remit that encompasses antiquarianism and meteorology. He asks what role these interrelated activities played in the making of ‘place, landscape and region’ (p. 11).

Their scales of analysis overlap, then, but Finnegan is principally concerned with how science operates in the civic realm – deploying his concept of ‘subscriber science’ usefully – whereas Naylor is most articulate at the county level, and when exploring how Cornish science and its practitioners interacted with the rest of Britain. Naylor's narrative is broadly structured by discipline (my favourite is the chapter on zoology – Cornish fish are surprisingly revealing subjects of study), whereas Finnegan elects for the more challenging thematic route, including studies of natural history as leisure, display and self-improvement. These are the component elements of his subscriber science; that is, the ‘collective and voluntary interest in science as a social and intellectual pursuit suitable for citizens in an age of reform’ (p. 3).

But more unites than separates them. Perhaps most strikingly, the universalizing versus localizing tension in natural science is evident throughout both volumes. They both advance our detailed understanding of the organization and practice of Victorian science at national and regional scales. They are revealing of their (geographic) areas as both containers and objects for scientific study – science in and of Scotland or Cornwall. Naylor's thesis is that through such pursuits naturalists actively invented the region as a distinct entity, and although Finnegan's focus is on the cultural topography of natural history, he also has a keen eye for its physical landscape, engaging as he does on dredging and mountaineering – depths and heights.

We already know a great deal about how nineteenth-century scientific networks operated, but Regionalizing Science and Natural History Societies add a nuanced layer of understanding to how culture, class, gender and distance were played out. I enjoyed the attention paid by each author to the material of Victorian science, and especially their appreciation of the functions of collecting, exhibitions and museums. There were hundreds of private and associational collections in nineteenth-century Britain, and these authors demonstrate their critical role in the making of natural knowledge.

Both Finnegan and Naylor are able to present interesting but little-known individuals or institutions as narrative hooks, such as the marine zoologist Jonathan Couch (who wrote the definitive History of the Fishes of the British Islands in Polperro) or the zoophagous ‘frog suppers’ of the Perthshire Society of Natural Science. These and other public rituals embedded natural history into civic life as individual writers planted local knowledge in national journals.

It is a shame that the publisher has let the authors and editor down in the production values: the occasional formatting error has crept in, the lack of cover illustrations is at odds with rich material this series could have offered, and the images could have been clearer (especially Naylor's wonderful maps – for better reproductions, see the British Society for the History of Science's Viewpoint newsletter No. 92).

However, by no means do these minor sins distract from the writing, which in both volumes is elegant and very readable, and based on an intimidating quantity of detailed research. Between them they bring to the reader's attention the activities of over a hundred learned institutions and countless local (and national) heroes without ever cluttering their arguments. They know their material back to front, and it is telling that their arguments would stand up to scrutiny and satisfy audiences at all levels, from local to international. Natural History Societies and Regionalizing Science deserve to be read by scholars of identity, cultural geography and, especially, nineteenth-century science.

It looks like the geographers are here to stay.