By Ben Hirschler LYME REGIS (Reuters) - The quaint seaside town of Lyme Regis with its narrow, winding streets seems a million miles from the melting polar ice caps or the flooded coral atolls of the Pacific.

In its earliest days (the latter half of the 18th century), the British Museum featured - at the turn of the stairs in Montague House - the wonderful botanical and zoological drawings that Maria Sibylla Merian had risked her life to complete in Surinam.