ATTENBOROUGH,DAVID: ZOO.QUEST.TO.GUIANA [1956]
[electricity illustrated by visuals of fish thrashing, people kicking as they swim: bursts of light over the muscles supposed to illustrate sharks' perceptions]
HUXLEY.J.&.WELLS,G.P. THE SCIENCE OF LIFE [1929,1931?*]
- My hefty single-volume copy, published by Cassell, is dated 1931. I doubt if it was ever read. Evidently a gift, signed 1935 by somebody
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BRIGHTON ROCK 1947. Screenplay Graham Greene & Terence Rattigan Richard Attenborough.. memorably chilling.. one of his best performances.. psychotic petty hoodlum Pinkie Brown..p>
DUNKIRK 1958. 2 hrs 10 mins. Black and white.
- Early BBC TV zoo programme; this was Attenborough's second overseas jaunt, this time to South America. Has monochrome photos. One is 'Cheerful Akawaio Indians carried our gear'.
Blurb says DA 'read an advertisement for a Talks Producer on BBC Sound Radio' for which he was turned down. But 'as a result of that application I eventually gained a place on a training course for television producers. I found myself producing programmes on an enormous variety of subjects. As a result.. I met Jack Lester, .. then Curator of Reptiles at the London Zoo. ..'
-Indexed, with 'index of principal animals': (I omit 'Latin' names:)
ANACONDA
ANTEATER, GIANT
" TREE
ANTS, LEAPCUTTING
ARAPAIMA
BAT, VAMPIRE
CAIMAN, BLACK
" SPECTACLED
CANNIBAL FISH
CAPYBARA
COATIMUNDI
COCK OF THE ROCK
CURASSOW, CRESTED
EEL, ELECTRIC
EGRET, GREAT
" SNOWY
GRASSHOPPER, LEAF
HOATZIN
HONEYCREEPER, BLUE
HUMMING BIRD, TUFTED COQUETTE
JABIRU STORK
JIGGER FLEA
LABRA
MANATEE
MANTIS, LEAF
MATAMATA TURTLE
MONKEY, CAPUCHIN
HOWLER
OPOSSUM, RATTAILED
PECCARY, COLLARED
PIRANHA
PORCUPINE, TREE
SLOTH, THREETOED
SPIDER, BIRDEATING
SPOONBILLS, ROSEATE
TAMANDUA
VAMPIRE BAT
ATTENBOROUGH,DAVID: THE.LIVING.PLANET [1984*]
-BBC book though confusingly copyright David Attenborough Productions Ltd. My 1985 copy is a Book Club version; lavishly illustrated all in colour (and physically heavy, I presume because of the art paper) but I guess cut down from a larger format original.
Index almost entirely consists of 'organisms', tho' camouflage, Labrador Current, Echo-location, Great Barrier Reef, Numbers, Migration etc are there.
So it's hard to look up (say) tree in Australian desert that has huge roots, or the New Zealand bird that booms (unless you remember 'kakapo').
CONTENTS
1 THE FURNACES OF THE EARTH
2 THE FROZEN WORLD
3 THE NORTHERN FORESTS
4 JUNGLE
5 SEAS OF GRASS
6 THE BAKING DESERTS
7 THE SKY ABOVE
8 SWEET FRESH WATER
9 THE MARGINS OF THE LAND
10 WORLDS APART
11 THE OPEN OCEAN
12 NEW WORLDS
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
INDEX
___________________________________________
note on jews and 'soul of england' idea
-white inventions and spread: guns, railways, motor cars, aircraft and people used to them
-seeking for birds, proboscis monkeys, komodo dragons all leaving mark in BBC audiences
-Tonga and other places; all seem unimportant
-shooting oran as eats my bananas/ hunting birds of p when wars between villagers imposs/ v localised languages [but why?]
SALT / POTLATCH/ TRIBAL ART [NOT IN PHOTOS]/ cleft sticks for written messages when carried by loinclothed man/ cargo cult inc dislike of missionaries - man thinking tape recorder had learned xylophone? pieces -/ Madagascar/ Abos in northern tip of Australia; paintings etc; ghost town pre-artesian wells [and human equivalents of ghost town, mostly elderly males] *lack of curiosity eg madascar vertical sun hence upright plants missing*
whites in eg brit Guiana trading with local stuff, getting fishhooks etc, 'marrying' local women
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[Dickie Attenborough: Gandhi, The Chessplayers, Cry Freedom]
- [Couple-of-page plug from Radio Times of 9-15 May, 1992, promoting a rerun of 'LIFE ON EARTH', is in .
- 'At home in Richmond, Surrey, he is busy writing the script of a six-part series on plants'. In fact it's impossible to work out who wrote the script for Life on Earth, if indeed it can be credited to one person; the opening title suggests, but doesn't actually state, it's Attenborough's work. Naturally [as with the 'introduction of colour'] no credit is given to the people who actually did the scientific work of discovery/ classification/ theory construction/ invention or whatever.
- NOTES: [1] Somewhat unctuous assumption of importance; Attenborough quoted as saying: 'Oh yes, people's attitudes to nature have altered enormously world-wide. Thirty years ago people in Australia couldn't understand why we should go all that way to look at cockatoos. It's different now.'
[2] Studio shots aren't credited; not made clear when shots are made in aquaria, vivaria etc. For example, we see creatures like sea cucumbers moving over clean sand, or creature eating a jellyfish, with background of swimming-pool plain cyan; must surely be done in a studio. And insects are shown e.g. munching, with unfocussed plain green background; again, surely can't possibly be outdoors, one imagines, since cameras must be almost on top of the creatures. Another sequence, to introduce 'the next programme', number three, on insects, shows a newly-emerged transparent-winged creature vertical on a blade of grass or something against background, out of focus, of attractive sunset or sunrise; it seems likely that this too was shot with an artificial background.
[3] Almost complete absence of ecological considerations: e.g. creatures, though shown eating each other, aren't situated in food chains or food webs; and, emphasised by the isolated studio shots, the environmental aspects of their lives seem to be minimised. [Maybe later programmes will be better; but I doubt it.] Similarly we see e.g. remote east coast shores of USA with horseshoe crabs coming ashore; nothing about destruction of habit or contamination etc
[4] Seems to be [as cp. series on plants, above] confined to animals, and moreover to those that look spectacular; plants, trees, bacteria, viruses, slime moulds, grasses, algae, are I think omitted. "Must be some of the loveliest warning notices in nature" is a typical sort of remark about undersea ?crustacea
Sunday May 11, 1992 is first programme of repeat; under the title of 'The Life Trilogy' with III in background. Opening sequence includes jittery film of solar prominences, total eclipse, then an earth behind which a sun appears.
'Life on Earth. A Natural History by David Attenborough' is sole credit at the start; end credits are, for 2nd programme, on crustaceans etc:
Photographers
MAURICE FISHER
PETER PARKS
Oxford Scientific Films
Doug Steen
Jim Rutherford
Rodger Jackman
Chris Fryman
Film Editors
RON MARTIN
Alec Brown
Sound
LYNDON BIRD
PETER COPELAND
Music Composed by
EDWARD WILLIAMS
Conducted by
MARCUS DODS
Graphic Designer
BOB ENGLISH
The BBC Wishes to thank
Australian Institute of Marine Science
Biological Station for Research, Inc, Bermuda
British Museum (Natural History)
Centre Orstom de Noumea
Department of Indian and Northern Affairs, Canada
Dr Carl Shuster
Dr Euan Clarkson
Prof Riccardo Levi-Setti
Sedgwick Museum, University of Cambridge
Smithsonian Institute, Washington D.C.
Produced in association with
WARNER BROS &
REINER MORITZ PRODUCTIONS
Production team
RICHARD BROCK JOHN SPARKS
NEIL CLEMINSON
MICHAEL SALISBURY
KEITH HOPKINS
Executive Producer
CHRISTOPHER PARSONS
BBC BRISTOL (c) 1978
May 31, 1992 is another repeat; this one's on insects.
[1] He talks about bees, wasps, ants. We see for example parasol ants and their cultivated fungus. He says that army ants are 'the most advanced' of ants
[2] He says perfect insect butterflies live only a few days: surely an error
[3] Insects "are never larger than an atlas moth." Usual explanation, viz openings on body allowing oxygen to diffuse; this is fine for short distances, inefficient or impossible for longer distances. Not true; when insects had no rivals in the air and presumably no predators except insects, they could presumably afford to be inefficient, hence giant dragonflies etc found as fossils in coal
[4] Finishes by saying that 'man has not so far, despite onslaughts with radioactivity, the most lethal chemicals scientists can devise' etc, 'exterminated a single insect species.' I wonder if this is true, thinking of the large copper and large blue in Britain.
June 7, 1992 is programme 5, 'The Conquest of the Waters' which gets up to amphibious fish. See notes in under Oceans. Continues his dubious superlatives: "... in Africa.. Lake ?.. perhaps the most hostile environment anywhere in the world.."
I think in this episode - though perhaps earlier - he discusses peacocks' tails and the problem as to whether they are the result of sexual selection; is this really credible? With boyish smile he says "We" really can't be sure. There are things we don't understand. Or some similar breathtaking statements.
July 12, 1992: Marsupials:
".. unlike reptiles they could hunt in the cool of the evening.. heat was the key to their survival.. they were poised ready to take over when the reptiles finally declined.."
"The Latin word for pouch is marsupium, and this gave its name to the whole ?group.. marsupial.."
".. It seems reasonable [i.e. from similar seeming creatures] to suppose marsupials developed here in America.. but how did they get to Australia? .. the answer may lie here, in Patagonia.. the [something] beech.. related to the European beech... it is a tree with a very long ancestry.."
".. a marsupial the size of a cat.. it has a good nose and sensitive ears to help it find its prey [sc. which is in this case] a marsupial mouse.."
August 9th 1992, 'The Compulsive Communicators', last programme about 'homo sapiens'.
Nearly three million years ago: erect animals with stick, chipped stone could drive off vultures, hyenas etc and live on meat
He says 'homo erectus', upright creature, worked stones, which are found in abundance in some African sites, [he mentions, without giving its name, that he's at a site with a ton of such stones, some with sharp edge, others chipped into round shapes about the size of an apple, and found thirty miles or so from the nearest naturally occurring site of such rock] along with bones of an extinct baboon of a type larger than any now existing. From this he infers they must have hunted in teams. This must have been for a million years or more. He also infers visual signals of difference, as opposed to e.g. smells in other animals, were necessary; says, more or less, that for this reason people have more muscles in their faces than any other animal, can express their emotions, look like individuals [! Some element of bullshit here, surely]
He says there were four ice ages and says that the ice lowered sea levels, so that land bridges appeared making travel somewhat easier. "But it must have
been bitterly cold" e.g. in France. [Is this true? Does it follow?]
"Between 30,000 and 10,000 years ago caves were occupied in France" and Attenborough seems to assume that cave sites were the only ones used, rather than the perhaps more intelligent assumption that evidence in such sites might last longer. He says the people "were expert artists" and drew "sensitive and accurate drawings" including of such things as now-extinct aurochs. He expresses interest in their 'abstract' drawings; patterns of twin dots, a sort of stepped design, a drawing which seemed to me a failed animal but which he said had been interpreted as a human sacrifice.
He says "Many peoples still live in the way all mankind used to live", i.e. as hunter gatherers; the examples he gives are aborigines, Bushmen in South Africa [who e.g. can tell which roots have water-carrying tubers even in drought, and who hunt giraffes with poison tipped arrows on dangerous and prolonged journeys lasting several days], and South American Indians.
He assumes agriculture started before villages: ".. grain like this.. middle east.. seeds.. nutritious.. enabled them to build houses close together.. Site in Iraq.. they built their temple.. a ziggurat.. of brick and reeds.. here.. first writing.. ?five thousand years old.. baked clay.. columns.. some sort of tally.."
Amusing thing near the end, where he wonders about facial expressions. Radio Times blurb says 'His evolutionary journey [sic; of course these people are fully human] takes him to caves in southern France where Stone Age people created imaginative paintings of Ice Age animals [sic; in fact Attenborough stressed the supposed realism of their animal pictures; it was the occasional abstract paintings, which he compared to Aborigine art in Australia, which made him wonder about symbolism] and then on to Papua New Guinea to find the Biami, a society of hunter-gatherers who have never before seen white people.' [Sic. In fact they were presented as people who'd never contacted other people; would their gestures be the same? Accompanied by what appeared to be several Australian troops of some sort, what he said was approximately: "And what of people who have never seen other people? Would we be able to communicate in gestures? I had the opportunity here in New Guinea.. a tribe which has never been in contact with other men. They are called the Biami..' or something equally stupid.
1st episode of 'THE LIVING PLANET'; 55 mins rebroadcast Sun 16 Aug 92
- [Object is rather unclear - mix of geology and biology, apparently to try to explain 'ecology' insofar as this exists as a science]
- Starts with 'the Himalaya' pronounced Himmer-layer and a river, flowing south to India - 'the deepest valley in the world'. [ITV blurb states it's in Nepal, 22,000 feet down in the Kali Gandaki, a deep slash in the earth's crust'] Shows rhododendrons, not too high, and birds etc. 'All living things depend on each other' I think he said. In the higher, colder parts there are plants better adapted to colder climates. The natives have more red corpuscles in their blood than whites. And they cultivate potatoes; they plough with yaks. At the coldest parts there are lichens, pronounced to rhyme with kitchens
Amid the confusion of themes there was one interesting point, viz that lava can crust over and insulate lava below it, which may continue to flow, forming a tunnel or cave. We see Attenborough in such a cave, which has, though it's impossible to tell how characteristic or authentic this is, a fairly flat floor. Attenborough explains that there are tree roots, insects and other forms of life.
- [Idea that life is 'everywhere' contrasted later with fact that it isn't]: 'No part of our planet however barren does not ?have some life' [Shot of snake on desert sand] 'Basalt.. emitted from volcanoes.. hard glass like surface.. this deposit in ?Hawaii has been uncolonised by life for three thousand years..' 'Volcanic ash.. the problem is its insubstantial dustiness.. three years after Mount St Helens erupted.. still no sign of plant life.. However, etc' [with shots I think of volcanic island which grew up near what was left of Krakatau now with plant and insect etc life] [At the end he indicates snow-capped mountains behind him, and seems to say there's no life in snow and ice]
- [Attenborough's attempts at geomorphology seem to confuse plate tectonics with volcanoes; in this episode, plate tectonics weren't mentioned, but the migration of India and impact causing Himalayas was; latter near end of the programme, without mention of earthquakes, and with many previous pictures of volcanoes, presumably because they're picturesque, not because they have a major effect on the earth's mountain ranges] '.. lava,.. solidifies into basalt.. when this happens slowly.. Giants Causeway.. Fingals Cave [I don't know if he called the latter that].. sometimes a lava lake.. as here in [African place]..' 'Mount St Helens.. bulge in the side of the mountains.. geologists warned of the forthcoming catastrophe [latter word sic].. sixty people stayed behind and died.. [number] million cubic feet.. top of the mountain blown away.. three hundred foot trees like matchsticks..' 'Krakatau [this seems to be new spelling; A pronounced it to rhyme with 'cow' but this seems to be a pronunciation preferred in the US] .. millions of tons of water.. millions of tons of rock.. the loudest sound ever heard on our earth' [sic; what about prehistoric meteorites, comets etc?]
- [Sulphur emitted under the sea at e.g. Mid-Atlantic ridge:]
'Sulphur reacts with the seawater to produce sulphides' [sic] 'Here were creatures that owed nothing to the sun.. ?tubeworms with no mouth and no gut..' [No indication whether in fact they evolved completely independently of surface life; surely not?]
- January 20, 1994 programme hosted by Attenborough on Scottish wild cat: a few other appearances e.g. by gamekeepers. [When Scotland became popular for shooting, gamekeepers were paid a 'bounty' for each wild cat they killed].
Attenborough's VO included:
"After the end of the ice age, there were four large carnivores prowling the forests of Britain"
"This area [wilds of Scotland] is steeped in legend and folklore"
"Even lions and tigers can be tamed, but this cat will not submit to human whim."
"Hunting during the day gives her the chance to feed herself and her kittens."
- Feb 17 1994, in 'Big Science' a BBC thing: Attenborough with gorillas; he says they live in a garden.. unlimited food.. no enemies.. no need to be agile in body. Or mind.'
This programme presents counter-view of discovery that the gorillas have something no other creature has shown [or something similar], viz when eating nettles in the Rwanda jungle they've learnt to strip the leaves carefully and remove tips etc; this food preparation allowed them to colonise the jungle (the implication being there wasn't 'unlimited food' after all). Not all have
learnt; a female gorilla who didn't know the technique seemed to be ostracised; I couldn't quite see why they didn't show her.
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- [Note: media corruption of science: function of Attenborough to produce view of nature avoiding anything unpleasant, e.g. extermination of large numbers of animals; note e.g. absence of chimps, whales:]
Sat 28 Dec 96, BBC2, 6.10 pm - midnight: Radio Times blurb says: 'Natural History Night. An Evening with David Attenborough and Friends. To mark next year's anniversary of the BBC's Natural History Unit, David Attenborough and four of the cameramen he has worked with over the years recall some of their experiences. .. some of the best BBC nature films and sequences.. viewers have the chance to vote for their favourite wildlife programme..'
We're told there are ten favourites which pop up over and over again. I think included: gorillas sequences with Attenborough/ meerkat sequence (type of mongoose which sit up in an attractive way)/ penguins/ speeded up plant sequences/ condors/ flying frog/ elephants/ hippos inc underwater/ kingfisher. At 11.30-12 a film chosen by viewers by phone-in to be shown.
Actually shown, about an hour each, were: Namib 1976, a 'milestone'/ Red Sea coral reef/ polar bears inc sequence of mother with cub(s) emerging from snow in March/ time-lapse photography of plants ('the same revolutionary time-lapse photography developed for the series The Private Life of Plants'/ and a programme on what were called 'wild otters', 'one of the rarest and most reclusive' of our creatures, filmed in the Shetland Islands.
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Insects also are the most highly developed class of invertebrate animals, with the exception of some mollusks. Insects such as the bees, ants, and termites have elaborate social structures in which the various forms of activity necessary for the feeding, shelter, and reproduction of the colony are divided among individuals especially adapted for the various activities. Also, most insects achieve maturity by metamorphosis rather than by direct growth. In most species, the individual passes through at least two distinct and dissimilar stages before reaching its adult form.
In their living and feeding habits, the insects exhibit extreme variations. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the life cycle of various species. Thus the so-called 17-year locust matures over a period of 13 to 17 years (see CICADA). The ordinary housefly can reach maturity in about ten days, and certain parasitic wasps reach their mature form seven days after the eggs have been laid. In general the insects are very precisely adapted to the environments in which they live, and many species depend on a single variety of plant, usually feeding on one specific portion of the plant such as the leaves, stem, flowers, or roots. The relationship between insect and plant is frequently a necessary one for the growth and reproduction of the plant, as with plants that depend on insects for pollination. A number of insect species do not feed on living plants but act as scavengers. Some of these species live on decaying vegetable matter and others on dung or the carcasses of animals. The activities of the scavenger insects hasten the decomposition of all kinds of dead organic material.
Certain insects also exhibit predation or parasitism, either feeding on other insects or existing on or within the bodies of insect or other animal hosts. Parasitic insects are sometimes parasitic upon parasitic insects, a phenomenon known as hyperparasitism. In a few instances an insect may be parasitic upon a secondary parasite. A few species of insects, although not strictly parasitic, live at the expense of other insects, with whom they associate closely. An example of this form of relationship is that of the wax moth, which lives in the hives of bees and feeds on the comb that the bees produce. Sometimes the relation between two species is symbiotic. Thus ant colonies provide food for certain beetles that live with them, and in return the ants consume fluids that have been secreted by the beetles. See ENTOMOLOGY; PARASITE.
Social Insects
One of the most interesting forms of insect behavior is exhibited by the social
insects, which, unlike the majority of insect species, live in organized groups. The social insects include about 800 species of wasps, 500 species of bees, and the ants and termites. Characteristically an insect society is formed of a parent or parents and a large number of offspring. The individual members of the society are divided into groups, each having a specialized function and often exhibiting markedly different bodily structures. For discussion of the organization of typical insect societies, see articles on the insects mentioned above. See also HONEYBEE.
Anatomy
Although the superficial appearance of insects is extremely varied, certain characteristics of their anatomy are common to the entire class. All mature insects have bodies composed of three parts: head, thorax, and abdomen (the abdomen and thorax are not always differentiated in larvae). Each of these parts is composed of a number of segments. The head is made up of several segments, usually so fused they are scarcely differentiated. On the head are two antennae; a pair of jaws, or mandibles; a pair of auxiliary jaws, or maxillae, that in turn bears a pair of palps; and a fused second pair of accessory jaws, the labium, that also bears a pair of palps. The antennae, usually attached to the anterior part of the head, are segmented. In some insects, the antennae carry organs of smell as well as organs of touch. The mandibles are large, heavy jaws on either side of the mouth. They close horizontally and are used for grasping food and crushing it. The maxillae, or inner jaws, are lighter in structure. The mouths of many insects are adapted for piercing and sucking rather than for biting. The eyes of the insect are also situated on the head.
All insects have three pairs of legs, each pair growing from a different part of the thorax, called, from front to back, the prothorax, the mesothorax, and the metathorax. Many larvae have, in addition, several pairs of leglike appendages called struts, or prolegs. The forms of the legs vary, depending on their uses, but all insect legs are made up of five parts. In winged insects, the wings, usually four in number, grow from the thorax between the mesothorax and the metathorax. The upper and lower membranes of the wings cover a network of sclerotized tubes, called veins, that stiffen the wing. The pattern of veins of the wings is characteristic of most insect species and is extensively used by entomologists as a basis for classification.
Insect abdomens usually have 10 or 11 clearly defined segments. In all cases the anal opening is located on the last segment; in some species, such as the mayflies, a pair of feelers, called cerci, is also present on this segment. The abdomen is devoid of legs. In female insects, it contains the egg-laying organ, or ovipositor, which may be modified into a sting, saw, or drill for depositing the eggs in the bodies of plants or animals. Insect sexual organs arise from the eighth and ninth segments of the abdomen.
Insects have an external rather than an internal skeleton; this exoskeleton is a rough integument formed by the hardening of the outer layer of the body through impregnation with pigments and polymerization of proteins, a process known as sclerotization. The exoskeleton at the joints does not become sclerotized and therefore remains flexible.
Respiration
Certain species of insects breathe through the body wall, by diffusion, but in general the respiratory system of members of this class consists of a network of tubes, or tracheae, that carry air throughout the body to smaller tubelets or tracheoles with which all the organs of the body are supplied. In the tracheoles the oxygen from the air diffuses into the bloodstream, and carbon dioxide from the blood diffuses into the air. The exterior openings of the tracheae are called spiracles. The spiracles are situated on the sides of the insect and are usually 20 in number (10 pairs), 4 on the thorax and 16 on the abdomen. Some water-breathing insects have gill-like structures.
Circulation
The circulatory system of insects is simple. The entire body cavity is filled with blood that is kept in circulation by means of a simple heart. This heart is a tube, open at both ends, that runs the entire length of the body under the exoskeleton along the back of the insect. The walls of the heart can contract to force the blood forward through the heart and out into the body cavity.
Digestion
The digestive tract of most insects is divided into the foregut, the midgut (or stomach), and the hindgut. In the foregut, a food passage, or gullet, from the mouth is followed by a crop and a proventriculus. The crop serves as a storage space for food. Salivary glands open into the gullet, and their secretions are mixed with the food during mastication. Digestion takes place primarily in the midgut, and the products are absorbed in the midgut and the hindgut. The food waste passes to the hindgut, or intestine, for elimination. Connected to the forepart of the hindgut are a large number of small tubes, called the Malpighian tubules, that float in the blood of the body cavity. Waste matter in the blood passes through the walls of these tubes and into the hindgut, from which it is eliminated from the body of the insect.
Nervous System
The nervous system of an insect centers around a nerve cord that runs from the head to the abdomen along the underside of the body. Typically the cord is equipped with a pair of ganglia, or nerve centers, for each segment of the body. The brain, which is located just above the gullet, is made up of three ganglia fused into one. The brain receives stimuli from the antennae and from the eyes.
The sense organs of insects consist of eyes, auditory organs, organs of touch, organs of smell, and organs of taste. Insect eyes are of two types, compound and simple. Each of the two compound eyes, which are usually situated directly behind the antennae, contains from 6 to 28,000 or more light-sensitive structures, called ommatidia, grouped under a lens or cornea that is composed of an equal number of hexagonal prism-shaped facets. These structures permit only light that is parallel to their axes to reach the nerve endings, and thus they build up an optical image that is a mosaic of the light impulses reaching the individual nerves. Many species have in addition simple eyes, or ocelli, that are usually located between the compound eyes. Entomologists believe that the compound eyes are adapted to seeing swiftly moving objects, whereas the simple eyes are adapted to seeing nearby objects and fluctuations in light intensity. Each ocellus has a simple lens overlying a series of light-sensitive nerve elements, all of which are connected by a single nerve to the brain.
The auditory organs of insects vary widely in structure and in some species are quite complex. In some grasshoppers, large auditory membranes are situated on either side of the first segment of the abdomen. Behind these membranes are fluid-filled spaces that transmit the sound impulses to nerve endings that project into the fluid. Other types of grasshoppers and crickets have auditory organs on their legs below the knee joints. These organs consist of membranes with air chambers beneath them that communicate with the outside air through slits in their walls and are supplied with nerve endings. The organs of touch in insects resemble hairs and are located on various parts of the body and on the antennae.
Reproduction
The various species of insects exhibit extreme variety in their modes of reproduction. In some insects, such as the honeybee, the reproductive female, or queen, produces thousands of fertilized eggs over a period of several years, although the male, or drone, dies shortly after mating. In other species, such as the mayflies, both male and female insects have only a short span of life after mating. In a number of species of beetles, both males and females mate repeatedly. In addition, various species of insects reproduce parthenogenetically, developing from unfertilized eggs. This form of reproduction occurs regularly in certain species, and occasionally or in alternate generations in others. In some gall wasps and sawflies, all
reproduction is apparently by parthenogenesis, and no sexual reproduction is known. In the social bees and other related insects, male insects are produced from unfertilized eggs. In certain moths, which exhibit sporadic parthenogenesis, both sexes may be produced from unfertilized eggs. Among the aphids several successive generations of females may be produced parthenogenetically before the production of a generation of male and female insects that reproduces sexually.
Certain flies occasionally reproduce by means of paedogenesis: the production of eggs by immature forms, either larvae or pupae. The larvae of some midges produce several generations of larval females before producing male and female larvae that develop into adult insects and reproduce sexually.
The method of development of eggs also varies widely among the insects. Some insects are viviparous, giving birth to living young. In other species, the entire larval stage of development takes place within the body of the female, and the insect becomes a pupa at birth. Most insect eggs, however, are deposited and hatch outside the body of the parent. The egg-laying habits of the different species vary. Many insects deposit single eggs or masses of eggs on the plants on which the larvae will feed. A number of insects lay their eggs within the tissues of the food plant, and the eggs may give rise to swellings, or galls, on the leaves or stems of the plant.
Certain insects show a unique form of embryonic development in which more than one embryo is formed by a single egg. This process is known as polyembryony, and in some species more than 100 larvae are formed from a single egg by division within the egg.
Metamorphosis
One of the characteristics of the development of insects from birth to maturity is metamorphosis, the change through one or more distinctive immature body forms to the imago, or adult body form. Metamorphosis of some kind occurs in most insects, although in a few species, such as the bristletails, the newborn insect is essentially similar in form to the imago.
Entomologists recognize two basic forms of metamorphosis: complete and incomplete. In complete metamorphosis, the insect first assumes a larval form, an active immature form typified by the caterpillar; then changes to a pupa, a more or less dormant form, often enclosed in a cocoon; and finally emerges as the adult insect, or imago. A form of complete metamorphosis in which the insect larva undergoes one or more changes in form (usually to adapt it to a change in food supply) before becoming a pupa is called hypermetamorphosis. Hypermetamorphosis takes place in certain beetles and flies and certain parasitic insects of the order Hymenoptera.
In incomplete metamorphosis, the insect is born in a relatively mature form called a nymph, which resembles the imago but lacks or has only partly developed wings and reproductive apparatus. The nymph changes to the imago by a gradual process, and no pupal stage occurs. The nymphal stages are separated by molting, or ecdysis, of the inelastic exoskeleton, each successive stage being more like the adult. In the simplest insects, the changes between successive nymphal stages are slight, but generally the stages are distinctly different.
In a typical example of complete metamorphosis, the larva is a caterpillar that can crawl in search of food and that has mouth parts adapted for feeding on leaves or grasses. As the larva grows, it sheds its skin from three to nine times. At the end of the larval period, the insect spins a cocoon about itself or, in the case of most cutworms and certain other insects, forms an underground earthen cell and enters the pupal stage. During the pupal stage the insect is quiescent and does not eat, but its body gradually assumes the imago form. At this time the wings and other body structures of the mature insect begin to develop. When the pupa is fully developed, it breaks out of its cocoon or earthen cell and pupal exoskeleton and emerges as a complete adult insect, such as a moth or butterfly.
Insect Attractant
Attractants are the visual, auditory, or chemical means by which male insects are attracted to females, and vice versa. Some insects, such as butterflies, attract members of the opposite sex by visual means; crickets, grasshoppers, and related insects use sound. In many insect species the females release small quantities of powerful chemical substances called pheromones (see PHEROMONE) that attract the males. Female saturniid and lasiocampid moths are reported to have lured males from 4 km (2.5 mi) away, and in one experiment a caged female pine sawfly attracted more than 11,000 males. In one method of insect pest control the attractant, generally a different chemical for each species of insect, is extracted from the females; or, if its structure is known, it is synthesized. The chemical is used to lure thousands of males of that species into contact with an insecticide and annihilation.
Fossil Insects
The earliest known fossil insects have been found in Devonian rocks and represent forms of wingless insects that lived more than 400 million years ago. The fossil records indicate that the class may have developed in a still earlier period. See PALEONTOLOGY.
Scientific classification: The class of insects is arranged in various ways by different entomologists; the following classification is representative. The whole class Insecta is divided into two subclasses: the Apterygota, wingless insects; and the Pterygota, including the great bulk of insects, most of which have wings in the imago form.
The Apterygota are divided into four orders: the Protura, a group of very tiny, blind insects; the Thysanura, which includes the silverfish; the Diplura, a small group that contains the largest (about 5 cm/2 in long) of the Apterygota, an insect of the genus Heterojapyx; and the Collembola, which includes the springtail.
The Pterygota are divided into 27 orders: the Ephemeroptera, which includes the mayflies; the Plecoptera, the stone flies; the Odonata, the dragonflies and damselflies; the Grylloblattodea, a small wingless order; the Orthoptera, the katydids, crickets, and grasshoppers (locusts); the Phasmida, the walkingsticks; the Thysanoptera, the thrips; the Dermaptera, the earwigs; the Mantodea, the mantids; the Blattaria, the roaches (sometimes placed together with the mantids in the order Dictyoptera); the Isoptera, the termites; the Embioptera, a small group of subsocial insects living in tropical and subtropical regions; the Psocoptera, the bark lice and book lice; the Phthiraptera, the bird lice and true lice (sometimes separated into the two orders Mallophaga and Siphonculata); the Zoraptera, of which only one termitelike genus (including about 20 species) is known; the Megaloptera, the alderflies and dobsonflies; the Raphidiodea, the snake flies; the Neuroptera, the ant lions and lacewings; the Mecoptera, the scorpion flies; the Trichoptera, the caddis flies; the Lepidoptera, the butterflies and moths; the Diptera, the mosquitoes, gnats, and true flies; the Siphonaptera, the fleas; the Coleoptera, the beetles; the Strepsiptera, a group of tiny insects parasitic on other insects; the Hymenoptera, including the ants, bees, wasps, hornets, and ichneumons, and chalcids; and the Hemiptera (see BUG). >>
Kakapo
- See New Scientist notes for article
- Douglas Adams, of 'Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy', in 1990 promoting his book on species: said this creature make a booming noise like the heartbeat introduction to Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon. Bass has a problem: hard to locate where it's from. And female doesn't much like the sound anyway. But the point is they have no natural predators in New Zealand; but man has introduced rats, stoats, cats and others. It lays one egg every two years. "Being eaten is a survival strategy" he said, puzzling his interviewer: he
seemed to mean that animals with predators breed faster.
- "If it meets a predator, it has no idea what to do. It doesn't know the social form!"
Kangaroo rat
[1] Big jump - long back legs - allows it to escape many predators
[2] Defence against snakes is to turn its back, kick sand in their eyes! They have no eyelids, find this difficult to counter
Kew Gardens
- See also notes in Botanical Gardens
In the following, <
- Sunday 8th July 1990:
- Prince Charles' rain forest lecture had just been given; printed copies available
- He said Henry Ford tried to establish 'Fordlandia' in Brazil, a rubber plantation, for which he cleared quite a large area of forest. It failed for 'biological reasons'. Charles in effect suggests it's economically rational to retain rain forests.
- Hot day. We had a snack under a tree; no available tables under trees. A man took a flash photo; in the strong sun flash diluted to spark, as in videos where a retouched effect is added. Crowds of girls. I watched their knees - contemplating these largest joints in the human body.
- Allowed to walk on the grass!
- Occasional resiny odours of pines; also a lot of pollen - strange sperm like smells out of doors.
- The 'temperate' house has plants from ANZ, China, Malaysia, Japan. Note: This seems to redefine 'temperate' [Cp. Dudley Stamp on this]
- Queued at the new Joseph Banks building: joked with Australian as we found a queue: "There's a queue so we're standing here".. "I think this is sponsored by Courtaulds. So if you see references to nylon creeping in.." "There's a roll of paper. From Brazil." "It says from 100% cultivated eucalyptus so it's not from the rain forest" "It's from what they plant after they've got rid of the rain forest."
- Pines in Northern hemisphere only. Species is 'pinus'.
- Camellia Sinensis = tea
- Cinchona spp. [species, I think] quinine: by 1893 quinine was 'freely and cheaply' available. After becoming very rare in India and east Indies, Kew was called in to help...
- Ropes discovered by swinging on creepers? Then twisting them? Sisal comes from a plant which is pounded; bundles of equal length fibres are converted into rope.
- Baskets perhaps discovered from coils of rope. Willow in northern climates; rattan cane in South East Asia.
- Linen, from flax, important until imported cotton, which was cheaper, pretty much killed it off.
- Cotton now the most important vegetable textile. [There's a bush in the Joseph Banks building entrance. Bush with tufts of cotton wool, not looking compact enough to be called 'bolls', hanging from it!] Latin name begins 'Gossyp..' from which 'Gossypol', oil with supposedly male contraceptive properties, is derived
- Cocoa tree there somewhere
- Japanese banana: intriguing spiral small green growths, but inedible
- Bottlebrush [without bottlebrushes]
- Paper Mulberry a Chinese tree
- Jasmine: small white clusters of scented flowers. Indian woman says they have
them in India
- 'Wax tree'; 'devil's cotton'; 'pepper tree'; 'cow pea' [low plant found in the tropics, important leguminous crop]; French lavender [slightly more camphor?]; Ricepaper plant [compressible, powdery brown branches, a bit like cinnamon]
- Lots of rhododendron, including Malaysian species
- Cinnamonum Tamala, 'Indian Cassia'
- Mezonevron Cucullatum [black spine, on a sort of nipple, growing out at right angles; otherwise rather bare bush has these every inch or so on average. Chinese, I think]
- Full size tree with weeping mode of growth and irregular boughs; very reminiscent of some Chinese ink paintings
- Bamboo; the tip is very like a rolled-newspaper toy which you pull out, generating a 'tree' effect
Sunday 4 August, 1991:
- At the Lion gate, board informs us the bananas are fruiting in the Palm House, and the giant waterlilies are in flower in the new Princess of Wales Conservatory.
- Marianne North Gallery was open, for once. 1830-1890. In 1871, Miss Marianne North made her first trip abroad. She painted in oils, not watercolours as I'd assumed, and painted plants in situ, i.e. not in the style of the conventionalised watercolour drawings of plants, with the components arranged on a page with black background. She was in fact an amateur; you can see the way she indicates shape by wire-outline shading, and her skies are always a characteristic blue. More conclusively, her paintings of butterflies [which I know] simply aren't right - these insects appear wilting and curvilinear and coloured with insufficient detail and without their surface texture being suggested. Her occasional beetle and chameleon similarly isn't quite correct. So I assume her plants, too, can't be quite accurate. Also there's never any indication of scale. Her colouring is surprisingly modern and bright; apart from some portrait-format paintings framed in gold ovals, the pictures look not unlike a modern cheap and cheerful display. However, I suspect she may have got her greens right, i.e. not with the amateur's excess of blue.
Still. She painted 400 or so pictures in total, mostly about A4 size, though some are taller, e.g. a screw pine's male part is shown fully replete with pollen. Her paintings include landscapes, including blue-distance views in NW part of South America, what's now the Nigeria region, and I think parts of Borneo; an ostrich emerging from one egg of a small cluster; a collection of pictures of the buttock-like coco-de-mer; the Taj Mahal; a Buddhist temple of South-east Asia; royal avenues of tall trees in Brazil. I can't recall a single human figure or large animal. Postcards of her more colourful flowers are sold as sets of ten. The display has her pictures arranged around the walls, and on most of a dividing wall of the gallery, which is a converted house; each is numbered, and a knee-high rail and board set-up identifies each painting by its number - the description generally being in the same column as the painting.
I wondered if she was a Darwinian; slightly sinister effect possibly suggests muted struggles?
- Palm House [completed 1848. Fairly sure by Joseph Paxton. Front has concrete animals sitting up, each with shield in front and forelegs on it; supposedly connected with the royal family; greyhound of ?, unicorn of ?, griffon of ?...]
The bananas were disappointingly green. End of each stem with bananas had purple nut-shaped bud varying in size up to eight inches or so. I noticed smaller stubbier banana like things in an attractive blue-violet colour, called to my surprise something lake 'blue velvet banana tree'.
Interested to see a Peepul or Bo Tree: [surely the source of Edward Lear's Owl and the Pussy-Cat 'Bong Tree'] not very tall, with plain mid-brown trunk inches or so in diameter, and a canopy of leaves of a shape with a long trailing
point extending the leaf's tip an inch or two. Sign says Buddha was believed to have been incarnated in the shape of such a tree. I think the distribution was mainly Bengal. This type of tree drops what might be called suckers, which have some strangling effect on other trees below it; that appears to be the way it spreads. Devout Buddhists won't cut these trees down, 'even if they damage their houses.'
Sugar cane here too; notice explained that slavery was caused because of the intensive demand for labour necessary to crop this.
Noticed that wisteria, intricate twining thing, is from China; at least, Wisteria Sinensis is!
And begonias are from China; a red type was made into a 'refreshing tea'
Below the Palm house, down the white-painted spiral staircase, is 'Marine World', a central round tank to coral reef fish with further wall-mounted tanks, typically each with only one or two of the illustrated specimens. I was surprised how few coral reef fish were solid colour; almost all had striking patterns. A tank held 'bat fish', black six inch tall very thin fish, with a narrow orange border. Some tanks held the type of seaweed with calcareous matter, up to I think 30%, which apparently on some tropical beaches makes up something like 30% of the material.
- Great stress on isolated and rare habitats: Australia and New Zealand cut off for ?65 million years; but in the Princess of Wales Conservatory, we find Madagascar was also cut off, for about 100 million years [we see a typical oddity, a ten-foot pillar, with spines all the way up, interspersed with tiny leaves]; The Canary Islands were also isolated; they too have a unique flora, a relic of some earlier stage of plant evolution [we see plants with rosette-like fleshy flowers, like a stylised rose made of succulents. One is almost black, and a note that only 1% of their laurel flora remains]; the Namib Desert has a unique plant, ? mirabilis, which grows only 2 leaves and is believed to live 2000 years; the leaves get longer and longer, and can reach 3 metres - though usually they're ragged and tattered from wind damage; the cycads, in a special house, are survivors from 100 million years ago or so; all parts are toxic, apparently. Is this related to the emergence of mammals? Did other more edible plants have to appear first? Another odd habitat is cloud forest, when there's permanent mist at 3000 metres above sea level; plenty of bromeliad-type plants grow, but trees are stunted and small; 'an elf forest' I think they called it. I wondered if the Japanese got the idea of 'Bonsai' from this.
- In the orangery shop, I leafed through a copy of 'Hortus', an A5 mag on off white paper for the middle classes, which said Thatcher, at the Chelsea Flower Show, had announced "I shall certainly continue to use peat" to the horror of the non-commercial onlookers and the author. An old woman had said "Well, they keep making new plants don't they!" so the author thought NOTE: Racist assumption how much more difficult it must be for people in China, Africa and so on to have any sense of conservation.
-June 1st 1997: Very sunny day (also rather windy). Walked most of the day outside, including the wooded area; carefully counted butterflies - none. To repeat: not one single butterfly.
Komodo Dragon
- Named after Komodo Island, one of Indonesia's many islands; it can be twelve feet long, and is a lizard that's evolved on a volcanic island, which was therefore colonised de novo; 'in the absence of carnivorous mammals', says TV voiceover, it's a rather slow-moving hefty thing but presumably efficient. We see forked tongue protrude from its mouth in typical TV shot. What it eats isn't explained; perhaps it eats small birds and animals, but we're left
uncertain whether the carnivorous slot applies to its food or itself.
Ladybirds
- In gardens: stinging nettles have their own specific aphids, so growing them gets your ladybird population up without necessarily spreading aphids to the rest of the garden: Channel 4, May 1991
Leaf Cutter Ants
- TV natural history programme with David Attenborough, 28 Nov 1990
- South American jungle, I think
- 6 castes; smallest, 2 mm long, take chewed up bits of leaf and shove into their gardens; 300 times heavier soldiers bite anything - shoelaces, clothing, flesh - that come near; jaws continue to grab even if body removed. Also of course a queen: during mating flight, receives sperm from about 5 males; produces 1 million eggs a year; some are unfertilised, turn into males which fly off to try to found new colonies.
- Cut leaves [which all seem to be smooth, green] into portable sections and carry these, often 100 yards, back to their nest which may be twelve feet across, twelve feet down, and pretty much impregnable
- They convert them into food by: [1] licking carefully the whole leaf surface, to clean off other spores etc; chewing edges [and eating sap] and making leaf parts into mulchy stuff; tiny ants push bits into their 'gardens', in size from orange to melon; with their favourite fungus within 24 hours a grey mass forms; they harvest the spores that form, eat them and feed them to grubs etc, then, when fungus is spent, dismember the 'garden' and chuck the bits onto their compost heap!
Leeches
- 100,000 at Biofarm, near Swansea. European medicinal leech an endangered species, nevertheless; in the Red Data Book. these leeches contain the most powerful anticoagulant known to man. Their incisions continue to bleed for twelve hours after they're engorged; cuts normally stop bleeding after a couple of minutes. 500 types in the world: the Giant Amazonian leech can grow as large as 'your arm', and it has a different type of anticoagulant, which can break down blood clots which are already formed.
They're trying to insert the gene into yeast, to make anticoagulant instead of beer. [This process already makes various products; e.g. insulin]
Milk a leech by giving it sugary water; it swells up; squeeze it gently ["it's a bit time consuming"] so we make it sick I suppose - a fine spray of sugary water and anticoagulant comes from its mouth
Lichen
[From TV, 1992, on volcanoes in Chile. We see shots of orange lichens, light green lichens, root-like pale bundles presumably also lichens]
- 'the least demanding form of life.. needs only minerals and moisture.. first to colonise volcanic ash and rock..'
- 'turn rock into soil.. thousands of known species.. each is symbiotic relation between a fungus and an alga.. the fungus has filaments.. the alga feeds..'
Lions
- Indian lions less well known than African. London Zoo person [BBC TV programme, Wed 27 Jan 1993 said there are only 300 individuals of the species; between the wars, he said, there were only thirty individuals. [See a note somewhere on India being 'shot out']
[1] Predators - eyes at front
[2] Adaptation to veldt: see horizontal strip in greater detail; tv prog
suggested they have panoramic or wide angle vision, or they may have meant that the fovea region is elliptical - not very precise.
[3] Pupil is round: Desmond Morris says this is typical of daylight hunters. Night hunters have vertical slit eyes; then half-closed eyes cut out unwanted sunlight from sensitive eyes.
[4] Prides are apparently always around ten or less; American who'd studied them for 25 years, interviewed by Richard Attenborough, said he didn't know how they did it, couldn't believe they could count to ten, but looking at their records never had a pride more than about ten. Vague and stupid wording, which left open the possibility that the average is about 9 or 10, but occasional prides of 11 or 12 might occur.
[5] Seem to use sound to locate members of the pride, which can separate out over quite a large area
- Joy Adamson: Viennese. David Attenborough said she thought she'd lost her lioness; he he slept out by a river, and woke with a heavy weight on him, huge lion. Adamson turned up; "Else mein liebchen!!" and it slowly left, and went to eat a goat. That's what he said anyway on Clive Anderson Ch4 TV Sat 7 Dec, 1991
Locusts
see insect flight
Lugworm.
[1] Live in bottom of U-tube shaped burrow in sand
[2] Input end marked by little depression in sand
[3] Output end is wormcast.
[4] Get nutrition from small amounts of food in sand.
[5] Eat by turning throat inside out, like a small balloon, so sand etc sticks to it, then reinvent it!
[6] Reddish thing looking rather like a penis with a few barbs to hold in sand and typically rear end full of sand
Mackerel
Ripple sense in mackerel: each fish in shoal creates a bow wave, even in perfect darkness the lateral lines monitor the positions of close fish. The lateral lines also sense predators.
Mangroves
-Mangroves in San Cristobal river. Special skin impervious to salt/ prop roots - grow out, into river; horizontal bit, then upright drops. Root goes down, spreads. Colonises away from land like this. Flying buttress style effect of curved parts of roots./ Seeds [look rather like acorns] germinate while on plants: root and leaves grow, so when it falls into mud, it can plant itself
Mexican Cave Fish
Eyes have ?decayed to the point where they're unusable and unused. Fish uses only its lateral line to find its way around. [?Is this related to the 'Blind White Fish' of Persia?]
Midwife Toad
- is 'European' says Attenborough in 'Life on Earth'. Male moves about with a string of sixty or so eggs tangled round back legs. When tadpoles are ready he goes to water and they swim off
Milkweed
- Has latex sap [hence 'milk'] which is poisonous to insects. However, David Attenborough shows a green beetle which bites the midrib under its leaves, so
the latex leaks out, in little white beads; then it eats the leaf ends
- Butterfly caterpillar presumably immune. Coloration of adult suggests it retains poison against predators.
Monarch butterflies in Mexico
-'100 million monarchs overwinter in a remote glade of the Mexican Sierra'
Monkey Bands [Rhesus Monkeys]
- [Monkey bands appear, or used to appear, in sociology books]
- [From David Attenborough TV programme about a small isolated island with 7 groups of these monkeys (they're vegetarian) in size 50-200 which loosely keep together, though the dominant groups, if they happen to move, displace less dominant groups. [Shots of monkeys by a shore running past a smaller group of monkeys, getting out of their way]. Island is narrow rectangle with promontory sticking out; one group sticks to this promontory.
- Male baby monkeys stay with mother; learn to cling on when they're a few days old. But at one year old, typically another baby arrives. Then the male monkey is rejected. [We see sad-looking, cooing creature]. Girl (well, female) monkeys aren't rejected like this.
- Male monkeys play/ wrestle/ with each other; also may get attacked by older monkeys and learn to be wary. At about age three males start to get restless, look outside their group; seems instinctive.
- However: male babies of most dominant female aren't rejected. They're called 'poor little rich boys'; they never learn to get along with other bands, and become lone males. [We see one, walking along, on its knuckles, tail up in the air as a sign of dominance. He approaches a seated female, grips her hips from behind; as Attenborough predicts, she's not interested; we watch her walk away.]
- We see elderly monkey, aged 27 or so, on his own; making friends with, being groomed by etc, young monkey.
- On heat; females follow males. Males form bonds for a couple of days; non-dominant males are wary and worried, look about; dominant males may replace them (or may not be interested). Females however mate for about nine days. A dominant male remains calm, unworried, and may stay longer with females. [Not clear how much dominance is genetic].
- As females get older, their position in pecking order declines. Males' rank increases with age; however, a male can leave one group, and join a new group at the bottom of the hierarchy, hoping [apparently] for more sex, because 'unmated females go for strangers'. Attenborough implied this prevents inbreeding.
- At water hole; lots of monkeys; dominant male arrives, they all run away - he prefers to drink alone.
- They eat minerals; unclear how they know which minerals to chose. [presumably by taste - like salt].
Monkeys in Zimbabwe
I remember in Zimbabwe, at Victoria Falls, a monkey being shot and hung up in a hotel grounds as a warning. Some black servants expressed regret by exclamation. People were cautiously feeding the others - they have a reputation for biting.
Monkeys by Attenborough
- [Programme on primates, supposedly outlining how man's ancestors evolved, though in a very uni-linear kind of way]
- Lemurs and tarsier found in Madagascar. 'Primitive' creatures not very like monkeys and with moist noses but with grasping hands which were mostly ousted by [their descendants] monkeys. Tarsier has big eyes and other things which evolved into monkeys..
- Marmosets: 'primitive South American monkeys' says Attenborough; sight
is a dominant sense rather than smell, 'and so they have visual signals e.g. bonnets, tufts etc'
- Howler monkeys ?40 times heavy as marmoset. Have grasping tail [seemed to coil around branches; unclear whether it had friction pads etc] which Attenborough said helped solve the problem that increasingly large monkeys have up in trees. [They tend to get bigger over time because successful males tend to be bigger, he said] They're at home in trees. They also are 'loudest of all mammals'. We see a group of four or five perched precariously together on a branch, mouths pursed, making their noise, which of course may have been dubbed, as most of the sounds apparently are, and which 'with the wind in the right direction can be heard five km away'.
- African monkeys never developed grasping tails ?'and so' many of them live on the ground [no South American ones seem to] .. they took to the Savannah.. chimpanzees have a varied diet..
- Monkeys [not lemurs] have colour vision and so 'can use colour in their body language.. monkeys are the most vividly coloured of all mammals.. as with man their faces are different..'
- Macaques.. "in Gibraltar for two thousand years.. probably pets of Roman soldiers" [Sic; not clear whether this is supported by any evidence, or is just schoolboy history] In many ways one of the most ?versatile and ?inventive of all monkeys.. [Note: Attenborough's tendency to award a superlative to almost all his animals] .. isolated colony on a small island off Japan..
- Apes: heavy monkeys which swing on low branches and have lost their tails; e.g. oran utan [toes have as much grip and hands]/ Gibbons long arms and fingers 'the most daring and exuberant acrobats'
- Chimps have great curiosity [says Attenborough. This seems to mean their hands, like gorillas', are flexible and can allow things to be inspected and examined].
- Gorillas.. ten thousand feet up in Zaire "one of the shyest, one of the rarest'.. ample supply of food.. silverback the strongest of all animals.. no need to be particularly agile in body or mind.." [This is just after he's said they share our view of the world, imaginative entry into another species' life etc etc]
Moon: effect on 1. Moths, 2. Starlings
[1] Theory that moths fly with the moon at a constant angle. They try this with lamps etc, and spiral in towards them, eventually hitting the light. Presented in Sept 94 Mensa in not quite convincing way: 'A nocturnal insect is faced with a problem similar to that of a person stranded in the desert. .. no obvious visual reference point [so] they are unable to reliably walk in a straight line. Moths have evolved.. over.. millions of years.. using the bright light of stars and other celestial bodies [sic] as reference points. .. the nearest object [sic] .. would have been the moon. .. even the moon could be regarded as infinitely distant and static. All the moth has to do .. is maintain the celestial body at a fixed visual angle. When a moth unsuspectingly uses a nearby artificial light source .. it will spiral inexorably towards the light source because the assumption of infinite distance is now sadly flawed! .. Moths are not therefore 'attracted' to light. Rather, they are several orders of magnitude [sic] out in estimating the distance to the light source.'
[2] Starlings seem to use the moon to navigate; when it's not risen or invisible, the have a fall-back magnetic sense. Magnetic storms and magnetic rocks, causing anomalies, confuse this sense. [Exactly like people with a compass!]
Moose
Alaskan bull; seven foot spread of antlers which weigh 40 pounds - have spikes on the forward edge, I think also sharp rear edges. Typical bull may last till about age twelve, keeping his harem together; then a new male will fight and
he'll probably die of exhaustion.
Moray Eel
Leopard moray eel [Bird World aquarium had one inside pieces of earthenware pipe in its tank]. Up to 1 metre. Black spots in dumbbell-type pattern. Tropical indo-Pacific.
Mosquitoes
- Dec 91 TV prog, Lifesense: "Mosquitoes can detect CO2 rise of 1/100%..." [Suggests they could be trapped by warm fizzy pop?]
Moth Defences Against Flying Predators
[1] Tiger moth with a ?noctuid owl [or bat] approaching. Moth clicks back.
[2] Bats can hear the beat of wings. Moths are at most vulnerable just before take-off
Naked Mole Rats
-African. Have queens: she has litter of about 15 a time, but only once every three months or so [I think], i.e. not as productive as ants. We see underground burrows- small, cylindrical things, a bit like underground train tunnels. Tiny pink baby thinks suckling. Attenborough's commentary [Nov 190] is the 'selfish gene' type - they're all descended from one mother, or something like that. To defend themselves, we see a snake in a burrow, gliding along. We see them blocking the burrow, about two or three, with tiny square incisor teeth looking as though they could inflict some damage. The snake retreats. Like ants, they share a common latrine; though in this case the queen shares it, and her pee includes a chemical which inhibits ovary formation or egg production. Unlike ants, naked mole rats can vary their behaviour after they're mature: ants, once they've developed, remain as workers or whatever.
North Pacific Giant Octopus
- Can have twenty foot span; not of course as large as it sounds. Has blue, copper-based, blood
Ocean
- [D Attenborough's 5th programme, on sea creatures including fish: 'The Conquest of the Ocean']
- 'Fish occur in populations of billions and there are over 30,000 species, more than any other group of backboned animals.'
- 'Thermocline' = ocean dividing line between near ice cold black ocean water and warmer lighter water which has [he says] its own largely independent circulation above
- First 'fish' had cartilage skeletons like sharks, which have no swim bladder; rays, ?skates evolved similarly and have cartilage skeletons, but live on bottom to save effort of permanent swimming, without which sharks sink & without which their gills aren't aerated - a part-work on sharks says a shark dragged backwards through water drowns in a few minutes.
Electric ray, if that's what it's called, is one of the few 'fish' which attacks divers, at least if followed or poked at; some sharks give a threat display, but the electric ray has a powerful enough weapon it feels able to attack. It can give several shocks. They don't seem lethal to people. They are slow swimmers; they don't need to swim fast, theorised some US diver.
- Filter-feeders, which live 'near' the surface, have developed into the largest fish: the whale shark is biggest, the basking shark (swims along with mouth ajar) next biggest, says Attenborough. The word 'fish' seems to apply to creatures without bone skeletons.
- Real fish evolved with several features: bone, swim bladder apparently from gulping air which is necessary in warmer water with less dissolved oxygen, and
good colour vision; some of these e.g. ?sole lost swim bladders, and live on the bottom joining rays etc; some of these developed poisonous spines, or front legs, from now-disused fins. (We see shots of e.g. stonefish with poisonous hollow spines, another species with what appear to be branching spines, etc; and another fish with three pairs of delicate legs, walking along the sea bottom looking for food.
- Coral reefs: fish adapted to niches: thin to swim between coral, or no fins on front half to poke in, or box-like and able to 'hover' completely static, or with forcep like mouths, etc etc to feed in specific eco niches. Can afford to risk bright colors as gaps in coral offer protection, and also to signal to same species for mating, or to show food area is already colonised by your sort.
- But in open sea need speed, 'nowhere to hide except with your own' [is this a sound argument? as we see shoals of fish]. Flying fish get near surface, thrash with special lower blade of tail, adapted for the purpose, and use front fins as crude wings; can fly with occasional thwacks on surface several hundred meters, and thus escape predators. They look surprisingly like insects, at least from a distance.
- ".. most of these electric discharges are very weak.. couldn't possibly detect them without specially amplifying equipment.. but that is VERY DIFFERENT with this fish.. the famous electric eel from South America.. it's shock is powerful enough to throw me on my back if I were not wearing ?insulated gloves.. these ?terminals.. four bulbs lit.. that indicates about four hundred volts.. fish are the only animals to have developed electricity.. [We see a three or four foot long round brown apparently wormlike creature, but with a mouth, lying inert on leafy ground in a semicircle; perhaps dying; it seems unable to move]
- [Idea that salmon, 'with an almost incredible sense of smell', return, in the case of pink salmon two years after breeding, to the exact same place they were bred. We see Attenborough in shallow water, surrounded by thrashing fish: the males 'for battle' develop upward-hooked mouth, and fang like teeth, and generally look more prehistoric; they fight for shallow depressions in gravel, whereupon, we're told, a female comes, lies down, spills eggs, which are fertilised with milt. The salmon then 'are spent' and their once-powerful muscles waste and they all die. The question is: how can you be so sure that the fry return to the same place? How can you tell they don't just aim for a fresh water outlet of the right general type?]
Ocelot
-Tigrio is Mexican word for the ocelot, a tabby cat-like creature with head without a tabby's 'M' marking
Orang utan
<
Orangutans are almost exclusively arboreal, with limbs adapted to swinging through trees; the extremely long arms reach a span of about 2 m (about 7 ft), but the legs are short. The animals travel in small groups during the day, feeding on leaves and fruit, mainly figs. At night they nest in the forks of tall trees on individual platforms built of branches and leaves. Adult males generally live alone, and many groups are composed solely of females and young. Habitat destruction and hunting have made the orangutan an endangered species.
Scientific classification: The orangutan belongs to the family Pongidae. It is
classified as Pongo pygmaeus.>>
Orchids
- 25,000 species. 35,000 artificial. Believed at one time to be difficult to grow; apparently this is something of a myth. Vanilla pods from a huge 60 foot? vinous cable-like orchid.
-Some species have complicated fertilization methods involving unique insects or humming-birds with uniquely-shaped bills etc
-Note: evolutionary branch or 'decision': orchids which slowly shape themselves just to one type of humming bird: presumably means they need far less pollen, and can therefore presumably supply their humming birds with more nectar and/or grow more strongly. On the other hand, both partners seem more likely to die out.
- Jan 1992: New orchid house at RHS in its large glasshouse, sponsored by Singapore Airlines. A couple of boards give information: 18,000 species, it says. Terrestrial types and also 'epiphytes', i.e. tree dwellers. Distribution is world-wide except desert regions like Sahara and W Australia, and cold areas like arctic.
- It appears, from a diagram, that orchids are distinguished by having three sepals and three petals, of which there's a dorsal sepal sticking up at the back, and, of the three petals, the lowest is contorted into the familiar drooping sack shape with odd-shaped structures inside. And apparently the colouring of the sepal, at least viewed from the front, matches the petal colour from the front, instead of being ordinary green; I noticed Slipper Plants, from Mexico, despite having a bulbous petal, or perhaps - hard to tell - three bulbous petals, are backed by ordinary green sepals; they weren't included in the RHS orchid section. This formulation clearly allows very fancy orchids [spotted, dotted petals and sepals, in purple, or say brown on cream, perhaps standing out in prominent ways] plus elaborate convoluted lowermost petal. And also allows for boring, ordinary-looking orchids, scarcely recognisable as the same family. I'd guess [though this may be wrong] that the genetics must involve triploidy; without this, the odd-one-put petal seems hard to explain.
Otters
- For anecdotes about an Iraqi variety, see Ring of Bright Water notes under . An otter was named for the author, Gavin Maxwell.
Parasitic Wasps
[1] Tarantula wasp in US deserts: Searches likely holes, looking for tarantulas. Paralyses one with repeated stings [if it wins], digs a hole, testing for size at intervals, tugs paralysed tarantula down, lays single egg on it. [And covers with sand? Not sure]
[2] Quite a number in UK. Saw black-bodied ?female with ovipositor; long antennae; legs red-brown, shading to black near body. Emerged at start of August - presumably when caterpillars growing nicely.
[3] Caterpillars may be in short supply, so wasps may fight each other for possession, and try to fly off with them; we see a shot as a wasp checks its burrow is clear, returns to the surface to find it's prey gone. When they fight, they 'never use their sting.'
?Parrot Fish
A fish can swim near the surface - in freshwater with overhanging weeds and grasses - and spit a jet of water to knock insects off their perches into the water
Passenger Pigeon and Extinction
- Was commonest bird species in USA: Audubon recorded them, migrating in long corridors, sometimes hundreds of miles of them. I don't know the mechanism of their extinction; the US people who write [e.g. book called Noah's Choice mentioned in 1992] tend to be coy on the reasons
Peccaries
Nasty-looking US desert wild pig. Seemed smallish, muscular, with 2 or 3 inch tusks
Penguins
-[Birdworld, Sussex] Light tummy camouflage. Feeding: one has a bent up beak, maybe can't catch fish underwater: retroussé beak?
-Amazingly fast underwater with no apparent effort; must be the flippers that propel them I think as feet don't seem large enough?
Pharaoh's Ants [pest in hospitals etc]
-appeared 100 years ago
-Thrive in London.
-Were only a problem in hospitals
-20 percent of London hospitals
-Bakehouses, stores, etc
-Very small. Gets into wounds etc. Can get into packaged blood etc
-Shots of gasmasked men lifting rectangular cover, fumigating region below- seemed to be mainly pipework.
Pheasants
- Origin in Central Asia, says TV programme Dec 91 'Lifesense'.
- Only a third are killed in a season on average - in natural setting, natural predators would kill more
Piranhas
-Eyes are infra red sensitive [or 'far red' as some people call it.] This is supposed to penetrate murky water of South American rivers, in water 'coloured red by [products of] organic decay.'
-New Scientist note doubts whether they eat meat
-Young has rosy tummy; mostly grey with dark specks, and a scattering of small white specks on the top. Mouth opens from above point of body, not at point; gives it a sort of chin which could be thought of as aggressive.
-Fully grown are 8 or 10 inches long. Bulging eyes. Much plainer when adult. Has a fin between lower part of tail and body; makes it appear trapezoid shaped.
Plague Beetles
- [Don't know which country] Group of them descends on plant which uses poison for protection. 'The plant doesn't have much of it.. has to be rapidly deployed.. each beetle gets a small meal, and a small tolerable dose.' We see accelerated film of entire bush stripped of leaves.
Plant Cultivation - modern methods
-Micropropagation - started in the 1970s.
-'Short meristem culture'. Get buds, remove leaves with scalpel, put little bits in nutrient and growth hormone. When they've grown for about a month, cut up that small plant and get another say 8 buds.
-Some plants (not potato) need root hormones too
-Virus testing: rub extract from a plant on the leaves of a relative of fat hen. After a week the leaves show symptoms of viral infestation (i.e. develop holes, irregular patches, irregular growth]
-Axillary buds usually run true to type.
-Buds elsewhere ('adventitious buds') are more variable.
Plants: Exotic. Carnivorous. Giant. Poisonous.
Plants- Exotic
-See in 'Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew' for index of exotic plants. [I wonder if there's a public garden in japan with exotic plants from the west - daisies, buttercups?]
Plants - Carnivorous
Princess of Wales Conservatory at Kew has entire though small room devoted to these; the pitcher type are most common though I could see how the sundew variety might be in toto more formidable: a mockup showed a small area, and I could visualise whole areas of these resembling grassland which would catch almost any insect, I should imagine. Note that poisonous plants and plants that attract non-pollinating insects aren't described as carnivorous, though surely in some cases, for example roses attracting greenfly, the object is to supplement their diet with dead insects or something more substantial.
Pitcher type. Quite a number of species, inc. a species only found in North California, the Cobra Lily, so called because it has a couple of fang-like things hanging from its 'head'.
Venus' flytrap. One-off traps which, when their three spikes are triggered correctly, trap insects in a quick movement, then crush them firmly, extracting juices. [From ?South Carolina, but certainly Carolina. See for accounts. No other plants of this type appear to be known to science.]
Sundew type: live in sphagnum moss, with little nutrition but plenty of water. Have tiny [1/2 mm diameter?] sticky blobs on hairs along long thin leaf margins
Butterwort. I think this catches underwater beetles etc in bladders.
Flypaper: some small plants have long, thin leaves near the ground which have sticky upper surfaces. The edges curl to trap the insects.
Orchid: '89 discovery of an orchid with a hollow, black-lined bulb or root or tuber - don't know the expression. It lives high in trees and ants find and nest within the root; they deposit soil, bits and pieces, and some dead ants, which are absorbed by the plant. Not 'carnivorous' in the active sense; more like any ordinary plant.
Plants - Giant
-[Tropical house at Wisley]: Easy to see why people believed in man-eating tropical plants [huge antlery-thing; tree with pairs of enormous bulbous lemons, citrus medica, from the 'peel and pulp' of which candied peel is made; bananas hanging down from plants with long fibrous leaves; huge palms etc; sinister smelling plants with surprising bright points of colour in the deep greenery - pink flowers around the red insect trap plants, filled with liquid - small spiky bright orange plants - plant with green buds tipped with pustulant yellow - purple buds on red leafless stems]
-Gunnera Manicata is the large, Brazilian plant that looks like sinister giant rhubarb 10 feet tall with decaying piled-up nests of stems and flowers, like huge catkins, beneath. [In RHS gardens; and in Virginia Water]
Plants - Poisonous
-RHS bookshop has a volume on poisonous plants of Hong Kong, introduction by Profs. of Botany etc. Surprisingly large number, and some are surprisingly lethal; quite a few deaths, notably I think to children.
Couldn't see any analogous books for anywhere else, not even UK.
-Cp. Ian Fleming, You Only Live Twice, and Japanese garden of lethal plants
<
Botanists have no set rules to determine accurately whether any given plant is poisonous. Toxic species are scattered geographically, in habitat, and in botanical relationship. They contain more than 20 kinds of poisonous principles, primarily alkaloids, glycosides, saponins, resinoids, oxalates, photosensitizing compounds, and mineral compounds such as selenium or nitrates accumulated from the soil. The poisonous compound may be distributed throughout all parts of the plant (poison hemlock), or it may accumulate in one part more than any other, such as the root (water hemlock), berry (daphne), or foliage (wild cherries). A plant may vary in toxicity as it grows, generally becoming more toxic with maturity; certain plants, however, can be highly toxic when young and harmless later (cocklebur).
Some active principles cause skin irritation directly (nettle); others bring about an allergenic reaction (poison ivy). Most poisons, however, must enter the body before they act, and in almost all cases this happens when they are eaten. Usually more than 57 g (2 oz) of the poisonous portion of the plant must be eaten by an average adult before poisoning will result (the amount is proportionately less for children). Some plants, however, are toxic in small amounts; for instance, one or two castor beans, the seeds of the castor-oil plant, may kill a child.
After ingestion, the poison may act immediately on the digestive tract (dumbcane, euphorbia, nightshade), producing severe abdominal pain, vomiting, and possibly internal bleeding, or it may be absorbed into the bloodstream. If so, it passes first to the liver, which may be injured. Oxalates crystallize in the kidneys (rhubarb), rupturing the tubules. Some plants affect the heart (oleander). Small amounts of principles in some of these (digitalis) may be used in medicine. Plants containing alkaloids often produce unpleasant or dangerous reactions in the nervous system. Examples are paralysis (poison hemlock), hallucinations (jimsonweed), or heart block (yew). A few poisons act directly within the cells of the body. The best example is cyanide, released from a glycoside in the plant (wild cherries), which prevents cells of the body from using oxygen. In contrast, unusually high levels of nitrates in plants combine with the hemoglobin of the blood so that it can no longer carry oxygen to the body cells. Some reactions are highly specific. Bracken destroys bone marrow, in which blood cells are formed. Saint-John's-wort contains a poison that, when ingested by animals, reacts with sunlight to produce severe sunburn and lesions on exposed skin.
Poisonous plants are too numerous to eradicate, and many are highly prized as houseplants or garden ornamentals. If poisoning is suspected, a physician or the local poison control center should be consulted immediately.
Contributed by: John M. Kingsbury >>
Plants - Decorative, Shows
-Delphiniums: [Free show at Wisley, in a sort of dark shed, 1st July 1990. Lots of uniform narrow-waisted green earthenware jars, each with water and a single 'spike' with blooms all over. Plus other displays in flat bowls, with e.g. six florets from the same cultivar, typically 5 3" diameter purplish flowers arranged with another in the centre, on leaves.
-About 30 classes, each with first and second prizes.
-One couple [the Bennetts of Oxshott] had been breeding them for twenty years; a sort of family tree showed the relations between the various specimens they'd crossed; they are either named or given a code number, something like M24, say.
-Delphiniums have a central spike, and laterals; in fact I gathered they may have several central spikes on one plant, but I wasn't able in my chat to quite work out the difference, in that case, between a 'spike' and a 'lateral'..
-[Compare this item from the Radio Times, which hints at the er hothouse atmosphere of shows: 'Prizes for vegetables and fruit will be hotly contested .. there is little doubt as to who will win the delphinium section .. transporting the produce on the morning of the show is not for the slapdash..']
Plant Hormones
-Arthur Goldstein: research into hormones that cause beans to grow buds/ Also produced more soybeans for pigs
Plate Tectonics, Rocks, Volcanoes, and Deccan Ghats in India
- See also notes on a 1992 TV programme about Harold Wellman
- Chile is volcanic: TV programme asserts interestingly 'Chile has animals perfectly adapted to the cycle of retreat [in the face of sterilized hot rick] and reconquest.' The examples didn't seem to confirm this assertion: lichens, which establish themselves first; ants which colonise the ground; lava toads; and plants then trees. Lava toads have backs which look lumpy or blistery, and their yellowish colour matches wet or muddy lava; moreover they can dig themselves in. But though these creatures could live in newish lava, they weren't adapted to the actual cycle, as far as I could see; unlike for example mpingo [ebony] tree which grows very slowly and forms dense blackish wood, and which after a certain size is immune from smallish fires though the bark does tend to split or crack a bit.
- [Following taken from 18 Feb 1991: 'Horizon', 'The Day the Earth Melted' [sic]; written and produced by David Sington]
- Late 60s: discovery of plate tectonics seems to have been proved, or clinched, but map made of active volcanoes on earth: we see map with dots all over it, largely lying in zones; conformation led researchers to believe there were a fairly small number of plates with activity at the edges.
- Idea is that there's convection up through e.g. mid-Atlantic ridge, and subduction, i.e. 'leading under', where this stuff goes across then down under neighbouring plate. Another example is Rhine Valley, which may get thinner then split open, forming new ocean bottom
- Pictures of Hawaii, made of 6 or 8 volcanoes
- Earthquake evidence [Alaska, early 60s] showed most of earth's mantle - i.e. not core, not crust, but all the rest is very rigid and 'solid as steel'.
- Researchers couldn't understand where huge output of lava came from if mantle was solid
- Clue was that material from the mantle, samples of which were obtained from volcanoes, was made of mixture of rather ordinary rocks, in crystalline form; under heat and pressure, the lower melting point components would melt or at least flow
- Mathematical theory from metallurgy, physics etc [we see same researcher at Argonne Labs library, xeroxing articles from Nuclear Physics abstracts etc intently] says that the important thing is the phase angle, i.e. angles crystals meet at; if it's less than 60 degrees, I think they said, then molten stuff links up around solid crystal
- This means when pressure is released above the mantle, in one place, liquid can flow out, squeezed out as though by a sponge.
- This provided explanation of apparent rigidity of mantle: most of it was solid. And also of ability to expel magma, as though from a sponge. [Had the
crystals been differently shaped, this wouldn't have happened]
- Allowed explanation of Deccan Ghats in India: from near the west coast of India there are many rivers, which all flow east. Explanation is that there was a dome shaped structure, which split open more or less north-south, near the present west coast, huge amounts of lava erupting in a geologically short space of time; they can tell because direction of magnetism doesn't change: 'an order of magnitude greater than anything we have today'. Millions of cubic kilometres. We see Grand Canyon style things, and where e.g. road cuttings have been made, layering, so there are layers representing volcanic deposits.
- Left part of India split off, separated, partly submerged, became Seychelles
- These eruptions about 65 million years ago; bigger than anything for last 200 million years. Coincident with extinction of dinosaurs: in between eruptions [eruptions seem to contain no fossils] there are e.g. dinosaur egg remains
-
- French poule chat=chicken cat; reputation for taking fowl. Albinos=ferret, white + pink eyes. Also get crosses called ferret-polecats. Polecats too wild to be tamed. Shot of flat capped northerner putting ferret down rabbit hole and lovingly folding net over the hole to keep the thing down. Stink of scent glands. Nickname 'foul mart'. Territory marker. Skin called 'fitch fur'. After 1950s myxomatosis, polecats switched to other foods; e.g. reputation for biting frog spines to paralyse them. Have litters of typically 7 young kits.
Possum
-Extra long 4th finger to extract insects from hiding places. Lives in wet jungle [eg New Guinea] where bugs tend to hide away
Predators/ Prey
- From Wildlife in Cornwall, 75:
- 'Predatory animals are essential agents of natural selection. They have developed the teeth, claws and other characteristics that enable them to kill and capture other creatures. .. the prey species have developed their own defences: acute senses, cryptic colouration, offensive smells, the long hind-legs of a hare and the burrowing habits of the rabbit, for example... the long-term effect of predation. .. The day-to-day function .. is to prevent populations of herbivorous animals becoming excessive. If game keepers had resisted the urge to destroy birds and beasts of prey in unlimited numbers it is virtually certain that we should never have been plagued by rabbits.
.. In Africa, lions, wild dogs and hyenas have all been persecuted at one time or another. And on the semi-desert Kaibab plateau in Arizona thousands of coyotes, hundreds of pumas and a number of wolves were killed to protect the deer upon which the animals preyed. Following 18 years of thoughtless slaughter, the deer population increased from four thousand to a hundred thousand. Then came the population crash and sixty thousand deer died of starvation in a single year. .. some ten thousand deer survived, and the few remaining pumas and coyotes are now keeping this population reasonably stable.
.. predators breed, or at least bring up their young, at a rate which is reasonably consistent with the food supply so that a rough balance is maintained... if prey numbers decrease beyond a certain point predators will either die out or turn to alternative food or move elsewhere.. Stoats and weasels, which had fed largely on young rabbits, used to be plentiful; after myxomatosis they almost died out in central Cornwall..'
PREY:
- Some characteristics of prey species are that they may be camouflaged. In some cases young are in particular, e.g. deer.
They may be ready to move fast very soon after birth.
They may have, as with mice and rabbits, large litters so they can counter predation.
They are often silent: presumably one noisy individual in a herd of gazelle or deer, or in a nest of mice, or rabbit warren etc would represent a great risk.
Proghorn
- US animal, looks to me like a deer, a mammal as distinctive as bison; several buff coloured stripes wrap around neck and over back, and it has white rump and throat. Horns, maybe twelve inches, curl in at the top, not a great deal, and have small side branches, mostly I think pointing back. Very fast - possibly second only to cheetah. Shy, keeps out of the way. I think a plains animal.
Protozoa
<
Most species are found in such aquatic habitats as oceans, lakes, rivers, and ponds. They vary in length from 2 to 70 micrometers. Protozoa obtain their food by ingesting bacteria, waste products of other organisms, algae, or other protozoa. Most species are motile, either by whiplike structures called flagella, hairlike structures called cilia, or amoeboid motion, a streaming type of movement involving the formation of pseudopods (footlike extensions). >>
Puffer Fish
-Puffer fish. Lots of types. Inflate by filling with water; makes them difficult for predators to eat. Found in East Indies, Zanzibar, Micronesia, Polynesia. In Japan, a delicacy, but must be cleaned properly; if not, poisonous or fatal.
Rabbit [European Rabbit]
-were brought by Normans, as food
-rabbits have no tear ducts, hence useful for animal experiments on eyes
-they eat their droppings: rush out, grab grass (or other vegetation?) quickly return to their burrows, and do this as I suppose alternative to chewing cud, finally leaving the familiar small pellets. (Or so Chris Butterworth said).
-Like Claude Cockburn, but in 1990 words, TV programme said "No one who has seen the blind and bloated face of a myxi rabbit will deny there is a moral issue."
-Myxoma virus in its most virulent form killed over 99% of its 'hosts'. The virus had a nine-day ?breeding period, then a four day period in which lesions of the face occurred before death. These died so fast that their fleas apparently couldn't get another host [see notes on fleas a little below]. A less virulent strain, 'predictably', now dominates, in which lesions grow for 15 days, and 25% die, the remainder being immune
-Rabbit flea has very specialised life cycle: when a female doe is pregnant, her hormones effect the fleas, who start to bloat, then mate when the baby rabbits [little pink things, rather like sugar mice] are born, and lay their eggs in the bedding. Rabbits only live in bedding when they have young. The larvae live on blood droppings from the adult fleas, and presumably replace their parents when they hatch into fleas.
-Effects in UK of rabbit decline: buzzard population halved; fox population dropped, and they switched to voles, birds etc; tawny owl population dropped as their food was reduced; in chalk hill area vetch, foodplant for chalk hill blues, was crowded out by coarse grass, so now there's tall grass and trees in areas where rabbit grazing kept these things down. Some areas have gorse taking over; this change isn't reversible by rabbits, presumably as adult plants are tougher than shoots.
-Major nuisance in Australia and New Zealand, but successfully dealt with in New Zealand, without myxomatosis, because "trade in rabbits has been banned, so no-one has an interest to keep them." New Zealander says: "They won't become extinct. They're doing very well. The European rabbit has already started to speciate. We expect 7 or 8 or 9 new species on this continent..."
-Australian Vermin and Noxious Pests ?Eradication Board in Melbourne is experimenting with rabbit fleas with myxomatosis virus
-They have used 1080, described as a natural poison; they impregnate carrots with it, and drop them from a plane
Rabbit Fish
-A poisonous fish: spines along its back
Rainforest
-Videotape, part of Sting and the rainforest, 1989 or 1990, 180/25
Rattlesnakes
- Male rattlesnakes fight by slamming rival to the ground. Have to watch out for them at the start of the mating season, apparently, which I think is August
- US: [I think rattlesnakes are US only] rattlesnake hunts took place near schools etc; now, though no good reason, as they won't attack, they're hunted in remoter areas; we see US jeansed men, with remote-control grips, and stirrup-pumps [if that's the word; cylinder that stands on floor, hand-operated up-and-down action] of kerosene which they pump into spaces under rocks to drive them out. They're killed, sometimes barbecued; I remember seeing one on TV cracked like a whip, presumably to get its skin off.
- [From an ITV programme:] Rattlesnake's rattle is unique; a bit gets left at the tail each time the skin's shed, which can be four times a year; the tip is the oldest part, and there are up to say twelve dry bits; the terminal ones tend to drop off. Not made clear whether they were skeletal. Rattle's 'function' seems to be a warning to large mammals that it's there, not to tread on it; presumably in part a plea - don't squash and I won't bite. With people
too it does its best to tell you it's there - possibly a mistake from its point of view.
- They have: no eyelids; no ears, feel vibrations; no nose - use their tongue (I've never heard an explanation of its fork; is this stereo??); some species, or perhaps all?, have a pit under each eye though nearer the middle (we see nostril like things, apparently holes, extending into the face); these are infra red detectors sensitive to as little as 1 degree Celsius temperature rise, we're told - because the food is mostly mammals
- The King Snake is immune to rattlesnake venom and chokes rattlesnakes (we see long shiny dark brown segmented design creature approach a rattlesnake, sniff around it, start to curl round; it gets away, this time). Another predator is the Roadrunner, a bird related to the cuckoo which prefers to walk. We see one with a very young snake.
- Various types of rattlesnake; including it was implied the sidewinder. One type has hornlike protrusions on its head; one over the eye acts like an eyelid, so it can go into burrows underground without scratching its eyes. Some species, about three or four, are protected. They all seem to be camouflaged with repeating patterns to resemble stones, desert sand, dry leaves.
- They have hibernation behaviour in groups underground (or perhaps just in convenient spaces) over winter; next year they head away in straight lines, to minimise competition, implies the programme.
- The skin is keratin scales, 'just like the material of.. fingernails' plus stretchy skin below it; when it sheds, its eyes grow milky first, then it pulls off its skin inside old.
- 'In US more people die of bee-stings and lightning strikes than of rattlesnake bites; less than 3% of which prove fatal [TV is not clear whether the 97% were treated: how many would prove fatal without treatment?]
Rhinoceros
-'African black rhino.. 70s a decade of disaster.. virtually annihilated by a handful of cruel and greedy men because of the wholly artificial value placed on its horn .. Zimbabwe is fighting back to preserve the last remaining black rhino herd' [TV prog] Were 30,000; now 700 or so. Seem to be only 4 or 5 dealers. Khartoum, Djibouti are two centres for export.
-Javan and Sumatran rhino virtually extinct. Indian rhino survives in small patches. Black and white rhino are African.
Scenes of woman who'd been left money with her rhino enclosure; big fences, 24-hour guards, vehicles allowed in only with great security. Blacks on guard. "They've been decimated in the last 20 years almost to nothing" [ah well...] "If only the Yemenis with their status symbol daggers..."
-Horn sold in North Yemen. Shots of men walking around with curved daggers in their belts, like the spaghetti western hero with a gun in his belt. Daggers have a central rib, and at the haft are about 3" wide. Curved sharply; about 8 inches long. Some handles made from water buffalo horn; 'most prestigious have the golden glow of rhinoceros.' Showed picture in the souk of the capital [i.e. market - another word for bazaar?] where they're worked in full view. Sort of H on its side shape, presumably with central drilled hole for the metal. Couple of brass or whatever rounds at the H intersections, and speckly decoration - or maybe that's natural.
'The shavings go to the far east via Singapore for medicine'.
-Were considered very expensive. But oil wealth has increased the demand.
- Singapore to Chinese-speaking parts. Chinese pharmacy shown. 'Western fantasy that rhinoceros horn is aphrodisiac'. Exasperating film of this half
witted Chinese shit saying "This is pangolin skin. It detoxifies. Rhinoceros horn cools. It is very expensive! $10,000. These are horns of the S? antelope [small attractive curly things]. This is bear gall. It detoxifies. This is gecko. The tail is the valued part. This cures 'evil wind'."
Robber Crab
- Heftily-armoured brownish thing that can climb trees, and perhaps crack coconuts; used by David Attenborough as example of a crustacean that made the leap onto land, or some such phrase; along with, for example, snails. However, this crab has to return to the sea to breed. We see him pluck one from a palm tree; could be a studio shot, could be outdoor - typical hard-to-tell arrangement.
Sable
USSR: Baikal. Waterside rangers, with pistols, warn off tourist boats near the 'black sable' territories. [Commentary: 'the black sable will not breed in captivity. Its fur is the most valuable of any animal']
Salamanders
- Giant Salamander is Japanese; can grow to 1 1/2 metres. Has hefty jaws, I think with simple solid teeth, and skeleton with legs apparently joined below the body, not by shoulder girdle etc; at least, the diagrams looked like that. It walks on small legs underwater. Left from a prehistoric thing that lived when coal measure were laid down; these 'formidable animals' had skeletons twelve feet long. All other newts and salamanders [there are something like three hundred species] are much smaller. I'm still not sure what differentiates a salamander from a newt. [From Attenborough Life on Earth]
- See notes on Alan in 1994; he's just got a pet salamander. This is a European animal, though not found wild in Britain - presumably it never crossed to England when the going was possible; I can't see why it couldn't live here. Small animal (though females can grow to about a foot long) which lives in mixed woodland floor and likes damp; its skin is dampish, and it doesn't drink, presumably relying on external water. Moreover handling with sweaty human fingers is supposed to be painful or unpleasant for it; but see later...
There are several species - I think about twenty - generally black, with splashes of a single brightish colour, like red or ochre or what not. They breed in water, when they have external gills, but live as adults out of water (unlike, I think, newts). According to standard accounts, when it's night time and after rain, they emerge from under their log or whatever and 'gorge' on things like insects (though not ants), aphids, small crickets, and worms. And woodlice. With Alan's perspex terrarium, this did work - pulling down the blind to simulate night and spraying a mist of boiled filtered water did cause it to venture out. Something played down by pet shops is that their colouration is warning colouration as well as, I presume, providing some camouflage; they seem to be a European version of those South American poisonous frogs, and salamandrin, exuded from holes on its back, causes temporary blindness if wiped into eyes, and can kill small mammals.
I found they eat earwigs, spiders of the non-web type, flies, smooth caterpillars, a green thing a bit like a lacewing, black beetles, moths, and ladybirds - though it seemed reluctant to try these again, possibly because, as its colouring suggests, they aren't palatable. I also tried long legged things - harvesters? - and garden spiders; but these seem to keep out of the way too much to be caught. Strikingly, salamanders seem not to able to see static creatures: if a cricket or spider of whatever stops moving, even if right under the nose of the creature, it makes no attempt to eat. I wonder whether their visual fields aren't normally just blank & show only motion.
The 'fire salamander' name is apparently German: stacks of firewood are 'ideal' for their hibernation, and when these are chucked on a fire the animals naturally rush out, giving the appearance to silly people of coming from the fire.
Salmon Farming
- 1991 TV report: 1989 or so: farms in West of Scotland lochs, especially lochs like Sunart [OS maps 40 and 49] where inland and restricted by depth and/or width to basins, outbreaks of sea-lice infestations [Small things; burrow in, attack along back, kill salmon eventually; also spread to other species, e.g. sea trout, annoying holiday or 'sports' fishermen] and a disease - ferro something? - caused considerable mortality, so these places now apparently abandoned or at least 'fallow'; also 'prices fell; too many fish were being farmed'. To get rid of the lice, chemicals were added to the farms; dichlor compound, commercially called Nuvan. Lobster fisherman [lobsters take 6 years to grow 'to market size' worried about effects of very toxic compounds] Experiments of 1 ?wrasse, a local predator, to 80 salmon seems to help, if the water isn't too cold etc.
- On west of Ireland, some farms 5 miles out to sea, although storm damage is a risk. We see floating rectangle, not very large; holds 65,000 salmon.
- They're fed on 'industrial fish', mostly oily 'low-value' fish; 5 tons needed to convert into 1 ton of salmon. Ian Anderson, [ex-Jethro Tull], says he's enjoyed his involvement, but doesn't think fish are very suitable for industrialisation; they need a hands-on, green-fingered approach.
- We see a man from the ministry interviewed; Crown Agency which owns the rights to water: they've issued licences ad lib, complained Dr [name], generally without visiting the areas concerned from London. Unilever is a company which was involved in Loch Sunart.
Scale of Animals
-[World of Mathematics: James R Newman, ed. 1956, Allen & Unwin, 5 vols:]- - d'Arcy Thompson & JBS Haldane: bones; muscle output; flight and air resistance; flight and mass - else tigers like aeroplanes; flea idea, Galileo demolished ?first; gravity and fish; light rays and size of eyes-small creatures rods/cones at wavelength of light, he says, so relatively large eyes; whales etc eyes not much bigger than man; porosity of skin and small animals transpiration; ?foliation of surfaces in lungs, gills, leaves, intestines; [& blood, it occurs to me]; diffusion of oxygen reason insects never more than 1/2 inch thick; need for pump in larger animals; size of whales gives greater velocity; air resistance and pollen grains; water resistance & brownian motion and viscosity & tiny bacteria; ?spiral organisms; pendulum idea of animals and speed determinacy; big > little; rates of fatigue, recovery; -speculation on static; no mention of magnetism; heat - small creatures can be cooled by clothing; large ones retain heat; small animals sparser hair may be better/ water: surface tension - insect drinking as dangerous as leaning over a precipice to collect food - hence long proboscis/ man lifts 1 lb of water after bath; mouse own body weight/ small creatures surface area: volume so great must eat almost continually. No small mammals in sea, mammals or birds in arctic: smallest is Fox [occurs to me all large animals vegetarian: no huge carnivores - since T. Rex?].
Scarab Beetle
- Despite Egyptians, this is a rather boring black beetle. Does however appear from underground, "which suggests reincarnation [or rebirth]" says TV voiceover. It rolls its ball of dung along; not clear where they get it, or how they bury it; at any rate, we see one with a ball twice its height, propelling it along rather erratically, since it's not a perfectly spherical lump. We also we it sit on top of it and defend it against another scarab. Believed to have provided the Egyptians with their mythical motive force for the Sun.
Scorpion
[1] 'No animal is more sensitive to air currents than the scorpion. Fine hairs on its pincers detect air movement...' [TV programme]
[2] Famous scene is a Disney film is the 'square dance': m and f hold pincers, so their pincers form a square. Film includes back-and-forth loops and country-type tune - 'take your partners...' - 'men to the left, ladies to the right' - 'sashay ..'
Scorpion Fish
-[Undersea world, Surrey] Indian Ocean, south and central Pacific: venomous and painful. Very rarely fatal. Stripy; white and tan. Feather like fins on top and both sides, and tail, give it a flowery appearance. Ugly smallish squarish head with eyes on top.
Scott, Peter
-Only son of Scott of the Antarctic ['Great Scott'], died. Painter; Olympic athlete; Slimbridge wildfowl trust founder; lecturer. His father's last or nearly last letter said 'interest him in natural history [not 'wildlife'] - it's better than sport'.
Seals
[see grey seals]
Seals have half their body as fat, or blubber: diagram shows cross section through man, thin ring of fat; and through seal, whole tyre of it. Baby seals can't be born with lots of fat [they said - don't know why not - maybe not space-efficient.] So they're born with lanugo coat, ie hair which they lose soon. Amniotic fluid in typical environment [minus 60, winds of 30 km/hour] freezes and blows away, so fur is OK!
Blubber on seals is so thick they cook internally after death: state of their internal organs makes it difficult to ascertain cause of death if there's an epidemic etc
Sea Birds
-Seashore birds: shag, europe/ Inca tern w.coast south america - distribution maps have red blobs on edges of water, different pattern from most birds, which have distributions in blobs stretching over continents
Sea Otter
- Swims upside down, with stone on tummy, which they use as an anvil to smash shellfish
Selfish Gene Idea
- Note weakness of the theory that superior type passes on 'genes'; i.e. true as far as it goes, but each creature has colossal numbers of genes; no particular reason to suppose some combination is necessary better than others. So idea seems to be a simple minded Darwinian one.
Sex
- Long day ovulation and short day ovulation: some animals [?mammals] ovulations, hence time when on heat, are controlled by the pineal gland detecting length of day. [There's a New Scientist article on this topic]. melatonin I think is the hormone which does this: ?Dutch doctor, called something like Cohen, is marketing a contraceptive pill which includes ?melatonin along with a conventional contraceptive hormone.
Sexual signal mimicry of a beetle
- A beetle imitates the female firefly at night, by producing a green flash at intervals. Along comes a male firefly. Gets eaten!
Sharks
- 'Perhaps the most feared of all animals' - banal monologue from TV. They can:
-smell blood over 1 Km
-eyes ten times as sensitive to light as man's
-'can detect subtle changes in the earth's magnetic field'
-'can detect electricity of life itself.'
-movement of water
- 1991: TV programme showed chain mail suits for underwater swimmers filming smallish sharks
- Teeth are the only hard parts; skeleton, if that's the word, is 'cartilage'. Great White Sharks, and perhaps others, have 'bandsaw' teeth which grow from inside the jaw; hence uneven spikiness of the mouth
- Hammerhead sharks: thing at front is flattened no doubt for streamlining with slight curve, bit like spoilers on cars. Means eyes are widely separated - though I presume far from the brain. When mating male clasps so they stop swimming and sink - until they hit the reef floor. Hammerhead, or at any rate one type of hammerhead, has a network of electrical detectors in this flat area, and it swims over sandy bottom looking for things like wrasse which dig themselves in to hide; extraordinary resemblance to a metal detector as we see it do this, pausing to open its mouth and shovel up a fish in almost no time.
- There are similar sharks - e.g. I think a 'shovelhead' with different-shaped though presumably similar head
- Angel shark is bottom feeder; can sit on the bottom for days, waiting, covered with sand etc. With the correct visual stimulus it opens its huge mouth with great rapidity and engulfs its prey (some of which are armed, and get spat out again). Its name comes from its flattened appearance, with 'wings' resembling conventional angel pictures; it's an ugly thing.
Shrimp - eyes/ sound weapon
[1] Mantis Shrimp: 'central band in its eye is the most complex colour analyser, with ultraviolet and polarised light, in the animal kingdom.' [TV pic showed lobstery thing, without indication of scale; 2 independent eyes, which when interested overlap beams on potential prey.]
[2] Mantis shrimp, [found in ocean] has a modified claw feature which gives a click, audible over 1 km away. Apparently this is loud enough to stun its prey - it just clicks several times, then grabs its prey and takes it into its burrow
[3] They may fight over a burrow: we see female in burrow being fought by a male, who wins possession. They use their tails as a shield against their opponents.
[4] See Cleaner shrimp. Seems less unpleasant!
Shows, Country Fairs, Produce, Stock Breeding, Contests
- Psychology: [1] Remember 'tulipomania' in Holland, Dumas' Black Tulip? [2] RHS gardens at Wisley have a note in their displays of fruit growing to the effect that giant gooseberry contests were popular, until they died out, I think some time mid-nineteenth or early twentieth century.
- [Note from a TV program on prize vegetables/ flowers/ fruit, which captures a bit of the feeling of paranoid enthusiasm:-] 'Prizes for vegetables and fruit will be hotly contested .. there is little doubt as to who will win the
delphinium section .. transporting the produce on the morning of the show is not for the slapdash...'
Sicilians
- are underground-dwelling amphibians which hunt e.g. worms; blind, look rather like worms, though they have mouths; unobtrusive. Only c 150 known species. [From Attenborough Life on Earth, accompanied by film of what looked like bluish-grey creature with lighter markings basically going across it]
Sidewinder
Unusual method of moving allows it to travel on soft desert sand whether other snakes can't go
Small Mammals: bank voles, shrews...
- [from VO of Channel 4 'Wild Britain' 8.30-9pm 8 Sept 1994:
- 'The shrew lives its whole life on the verge of starvation' [because cooling is so rapid. Cp Wells in 'Work, Wealth and Happiness..']
- 'Bank voles are very common.. very shy so they pass unnoticed.. breed quickly.. during summer.. after having a ?brood of four offspring, a female becomes pregnant again the day after.. when the new brood is born, she throws out the old.. if she has to move, she moves the babies.. if they are younger than four days, she abandons them or eats them.."
- 'Woodland animals.. they have never adapted to the arrival of humans [sic].. people picnicking.. they lose time which they need to spend feeding in hiding..'
Snails
- BBC2 Horizon Mon 21 Nov 1994: [Following from TV Times write-up]. African land snail introduced on some Polynesian islands; I'm not sure if this was intentional or accidental. At any rate, at about the size of a hand they ate land bare here and there - we see accounts of small islands (one was called 'Moorea') & e.g. Frenchman in shorts saying the ground was 'nue'. A scientist - we're carefully told and shown he was black - suggested biological control by means of a snail from Florida, Euglandina, which eats snails: it has a pair of things on its head which reminded me of shovel-nosed sharks - sort of moustache like things hovering above the ground, with which it follows snail trails. When it gets to the snail it either eats it, mates with it, or does something else; ignores it? Anyway, they don't like African Land Snails - the shells are too big and Euglandina likes to eat shells. So instead they ate the small local Partula tree snails, which are 'hugely important because of its unique evolutionary history'. This I imagine is an exaggeration; the only importance seemed to be that neighbouring species are kept differentiated by having shells curling opposite ways. Anyway, 'a lab technician, Vivien Frame,.. looked after them for 10 years' in lunchboxes in Tahiti. Euglandina can move ten times as fast as Partula. I missed the end of this programme, apparently a release into the wild.
Snakes
-[1] Learning: fear of snakes' hiss, must be instinctive? Because you'd only have one chance to learn it?
Strikes me a possible alternative theory is that people are far more sensitive than thought to early conditioning - cp. people and spider, mice. One big scream can affect your life!
-[2] Snakes - which spend their lives on their bellies - can detect tiny vibrations, perhaps also those preceding earthquakes.
-[3] infra-red: see cottonmouth snake
-[4] moving on soft sand: see Sidewinder
Soldier Ants
-Social insects. Foragers [US: "forgers"]
-4 sizes of soldier ant: soldiers kill, submajors carry under bodies, jack of all trades, little ones in nest
Spider Crab
- Shown in Attenborough being fished for by primitive Japanese boat; they live at a depth of several hundred metres. Once out of water, they can't move their limbs; Attenborough manhandles one in rather callous-seeming way, rubbing his hands over its red/orange carapace, commenting on its sensitive hairs there. Its legs are constructed like a hollow tube with a muscle like a wire hawser [not as regards strength; so a very poor analogy]. Since a ball and socket joint isn't possible with this arrangement, the segments of its limbs are arranged at different angles; in sort of Anglepoise fashion [not Attenborough's example] it can get its limbs where it wants them. Not only that - sometimes they're THIS BIG! [Holds up larger carapace; they can be [number] metres across]
Spiders
[1] Cast their skins as they grow
[2] Can be caught with tuning fork - they think it's insect wing, come and bite the fork repeatedly. I tried this with Simon's 'A' fork (440 Hz) and got varied responses: some garden spiders indeed rushed to embrace the fork end; others though seemed to run away - perhaps they thought it was a wasp? - and still others ignored it, though in this latter case at least once I vibrated a long connecting strand which perhaps wasn't designed to hold an insect.
[3] Raft spider q.v. has sensitive hairs on its legs
[4] Bolus spider uses a sort of lasso!
[5] Jumping Spiders: Typically sit on walls. In the 50s, German researcher showed they respond to legs; anything else they eat, but legs are treated as other spiders. If they're female legs, the spider does a sort of highland fling. They have two types of eye: fixed, to give a static picture, and scanning, which scan back and forth searching for legs! [Or so a short radio item said]
[6] Spiders which steal other spiders' food: amusing Attenborough sequence with huge 6" spider [not British] catching a fly, injecting with digestant, leaving it wrapped up while it attended to another; and tiny spider coming to fly, cutting it loose one strand at a time, and hi-jacking it for itself!
Squirrels: Red and Gray
- [Following from TV programme, Channel 4, called 'The Fall of Squirrel Nutkin' 29 Dec 1994. Title taken from Beatrix Potter; when she wrote her story at the turn of the century, 'red squirrels were plentiful all over Britain.']
- Red squirrels can survive harsh snows (though they have to come out every two days). 'Pine forests' are their 'ancestral home'.
Hazelnuts are their main food source we're told. And bluebell bulbs, which they dig up, fungi, and 'old pine cones' my notes say, i.e. meaning opened or opening ones. They eat the seeds from 40,000 a year. It's recently been discovered that they can't digest acorns properly. So the activity of burying acorns, an 'instinct', seems even odder.
They 'use boughs as sky walks'. [This reminded me of some council housing].
- Gray squirrels are twice as heavy; their US origins were in mixed deciduous woodland. In 1890 the first grey was imported - it's not clear how this is known; presumably it must have been an ocean liner voyage. From then they spread, apparently ?mostly from inland from coastal introduction points. Implication seemed to be made (though not actually stated) that their greater size means they can't live on less dense supplies of food like pine forests; at any rate, the red squirrels still seem to dominate in such areas.
- So the programme was more optimistic than the title seemed to imply.
- NB: Nothing said as to the views of conservators or gamekeepers or hunters or whatever on these animals.
Starfish
[1] Little protrusions help them to walk
[2] Propel food to central mouth
[3] Stomach can be pushed outside mouth, forced into shellfish, where it digests them. Then pulled back into mouth[!]
Starlings - late Summer, in London
-Park keepers take ARP - turn up benches
-Shot of a Westminster Council man hitting a dustbin to try to scare them off. It was a plastic bin - shows how primitive habits get maintained!
-They play alarm calls too. [Shot of horn in a tree]
-Idea is to get flock together, practice flying together, give weak/young birds practice in flying
Stoats, Ermine
- See Wildlife in Cornwall, pp 76-77; occasional sightings e.g. on Bodmin Moor of white i.e. winter-coat stoats = ermines
Stonefish
- North coast of Australia. Small fish; size of a small human foot? Looks like a stone; we see one on a beach, mottled pebbly colour, contorted Chinese-dragon type face. Spines on back seem to lie flat; when raised and pressure applied, venom comes out - we see stick applied, and nasty looking liquid appear. One spine will give you a painful injury; two or three, convulsions and death.
Swans and Swan-upping/ Trumpeter Swans
-Swans were rounded up each year by owners - royalty etc.
-Once happened all over the country; they rowed, wore red shirts, had a flag with a swan motif
-Beaks marked. 'Hundreds of beak marks at one time.'
-'It was the most expensive bird per pound'.
-Custom survived till 60s. Lead poisoning caused by angling caused their numbers to drop; now lead shot is supposed to be banned.
-Nov 90: By Windsor tow-path, saw several crowds of people feeding mixed swans, ducks, and other birds. I asked a man, who seemed to know what he was doing, whether there was any truth in the idea that a swan can 'break your arm.' He said ".. they never use their beaks in defence.. they wave their wings hard backward and forwards.. they may have a six-foot wingspan.. an adult male can break your arm." "How can you tell which is male?" "The females have a lump over their beak (draws attention to its prominent black feature) the males have a smaller, narrower one.." "I have heard it's a myth maybe to put people off handling them..." "No, they can break your arm." I still found it hard to believe, but of course it's difficult to re-ask an unintelligent person. Maybe it's an idea from Pliny.
Note: Myth: hard to tell: [Note: written by woman:] 7 of 'Butterflies of Pembrokeshire' says 'Indeed, if these scales were to be rubbed off, both colour and flying ability would be lost.' I presume this must be a myth, but of course actualy checking it would be tricky.
Trumpeter Swans
-Trumpeter swans all but exterminated in the USA for their feathers. Survivors being taught to migrate (they don't know the route) by bonding with naturalists who then use microlite aircraft to lead the young swans... [New Scientist July
97]
Tarantulas
[1] Mexican red-kneed tarantula: hairy thing with legs alternately black and red at joints. 'Fast disappearing in the wild'. Report of breeding in captivity in July '89
[2] World Almanac states [in 'venomous creatures'] that American and probably all other Tarantulas are not venomous.
Termites
-Burrows made by workers - chew sand grains, add saliva- 'sets like cement.'
-Alates [Not sure of spelling. Winged termites]. Some emerge nighttime; some day. 15 minutes. Fly off - if they're lucky; females land, fan pheromones with their wings; any male seems to do - wings drop off, burrow, mate - again, if they survive.
- This allows new burrows to form elsewhere.
-'Alates are good eating. .. Stored food for their journey.. 40% fat, 40% protein. Taste like peanut butter/ bonemarrow. Showed ?Kenya tribe; 'burrows are owned, inherited from father to son'. Showed them putting cow skins down, blocking all exits but front of cowskin at ground level; dig smallish pit - 9", 1 foot - with a sisal leaf [long, shiny] round inside. Scoop them up. 4 or 5 gallons from a burrow. 'Fried in their own fat they last for months.' Winnowed to get wings off. [Shots of black girls with wings sticking out of mouths; and ants, ?foxes, chameleons, monitor lizards, elephant shrew etc etc]
-Mated termites never see daylight again. Blind. Queen grows 4 inches long, 'thick as a man's thumb'; dwarfs termites. King bigger than usual termites, but not much. Queen chamber is suspended - excavated all round except for a few supports. 'Portholes' down the side make it easy to guard.
-2% soldiers: big heads. Two types: 'major' and 'minor'. They are sterile females. Workers also sterile females? Two types of these too. Termites - or some termites - defend themselves by squirting chemicals: these seems to work quite well against small burrowing types of mammal, which sniff their way around and therefore presumably have sensitive noses.
-They Grow fungi underground.
-Architecture varies with climate: interesting shot of mushroom shaped type, with overlapping top, in rain; and tall, tapering type - taper supposed to be a sort of chimney to vent heat from within burrow. 'Freeform architecture based on the arch - no repetitive hexagons'
-Creatures live in vents: shrews, monitor lizards [they like warmth, moisture, but they're big - can't manoeuvre, tend to be wedged upright in chimney] bird may nest, mongooses live there. Assassin bugs lurk - spidery thing covered with sucked-dry insect victims for camouflage.
-Predators: Most serious seemed to be aardvark. Soft sensitive nose, with little tuft of hair to trap sand. Fore feet strong enough to demolish nests; 'can outdig 2 men with shovels'. Goes out on nocturnal feed, cutting hole, licking termites - long tongue shoots along galleries. If very hungry may burrow far in, exposing queen. With queen dead, millions of termites may continue to live their 'little lives', but they can't replenish themselves
-Army ants another predator: if a nest is defenceless, scouts may find out, report back [if termite soldiers don't stop them] and destroy nest.
-Aardvark holes: may hold porcupines, aardwolves [hyena-like things; eat only ants - 'most specialised mammal on earth']
-Queen produces about an egg a second. Output mix varies: if scouts report there are fewer soldiers than usual, by biochemical 'message', the output increases! Since she's enclosed, has to be fed - on food regurgitated by workers.
-I read somewhere that if a queen's output drops, the workers get rid of her! But maybe this is a moralizing tale. Or maybe not! What happens if a queen is ill, for instance?
'Magnetic Termites' of Western Australia: build upright, very flattened 'hills' which face the early morning sun, present a knife-edge to midday-sun, and catch evening sun. They are all oriented north-south and are miscalled 'magnetic' because of this.
Nigerian Termites I think build the largest nests: 20 feet and more high. Have sort of air conditioning system: nest is completely enclosed, but is surrounded by a sort of rough crown of upright-penis-like things [my description] through which air diffuses, or exchanges, with the air inside; moreover, because the termites dig down to the water table, six or so feet, and use the resulting mud to build - and also build flat plates, like cooling fins, in their underground chamber, air seems to slowly circulate and freshen. They also keep a special type of mould to eat, which grows only in termite nests, where the temperature is right!
-Note: Can they do this just by following fairly simple algorithms? Their tiny size suggests they must do
Terns
Several types. They differ in their reaction to avian predators - e.g. jackdaws. Some sit tight, pointing their beaks to the sky, and waiting with their chicks. These are safe. Others fly up, and mob the jackdaw; this gives it a chance to slip down again and grab a chick.
Tetras
-Edible fish: Slender tetra called piabucus in South America, 'large canning factories on the Orinoco'
-tetras: bleeding heart tetra [has small red blob near 'heart']; black widow tetra; silver tipped tetra; black phantom tetra; cardinal tetra [same ass neon tetra?]; dawn tetra; callistus tetra.
Tiger Hunting in Sumatra
- Sumatran tigers rare - few hundred left [19 Sept 89 Channel 4 programme]
- Hunter [little, wiry, slightly bearded wizened chap. Tempted to see him as monkeylike]. Tiger with front paw up in noose; the trap must have been some simple device involving a springy tree.
- Looking with yellow eyes. Continuous low growling.
- Took aim with old rifle [wooden stock, black barrel] very slowly and deliberately. Aimed for the heart, but from standing position - i.e. not from underbelly. So I suppose the skin must have had a hole in it.
- Crack. Tiger curls head into chest. Mouth opens. Impression of salivation, and of becoming limp. The three men wait and watch. Its eyes look dull; is this the ?tapetum losing its blood supply, or the eyeball losing turgidity or growing opaque? At any rate, it seemed a fast process.
- Men come. Leader gets a small object - I thought it was a stone - and breaks it between his fingers. It seems to be a fragment of razor blade.
- Starting on white fur at base of abdomen, they cut a slit a foot or 18 inches long. It gapes; they cut adhering edges free, leaving a red mass. They reach inside, pull out organs; cut and trim them.
- Remove back leg bones and invert leg skin: tug hard - white strip stretches out, presumably cartilage or tendon. Reinvert legs. Pop the claws out.
- Coat now half-way down body. They put a loop around the stub of the rear end and tug the tiger over a tree; head hangs down. [Say what sounds like 'up']. All this in silence.
- Cut of the coat so it hangs down, leaving flayed tiger, ribs visible, head hanging down, horrible and red. Almost human-like spine and rib formation when its upright like that.
- The skull - i.e. skull covered by red flesh - is a distinctive streamlined shape, unlike a furry tiger's head; it has upper teeth neatly arranged pointing down. They handle it by the eyes, having poked these out. Man cuts off head, cutting at vertebrae.
- One man brushes the bloody hide with his hand. Turns it inside out: pathetic floppy head, body and skinny-seeming floppy paws. It lies crumpled in a heap on the grass in the forest clearing.
- Gets head, puts it inside body. Folds the limbs round the head in a tidy package
- Gets out a carrier bag of woven red-and-blue plastic, with plastic carrying handles. It fits neatly.
- They keep tiger meat for themselves or for sale in Jambi, the nearest town.
- Tiger bones sell to Chinese pharmacies 'greatly prized'.
- Man had killed 31 tigers, he says.
- Put it in 'spirit.' Rather grotesque trade-named product in cans - 'SEMPERVITUS' or something. 'May stay in spirit for months'.
- Road to Jambi: ?3 hour trip. Roadsides lined with jungle. Road is dust surfaced. 'Diamond' yellow signs with black picture of tiger leaping rightwards. 'Despite his illegal load -- takes the village taxi'.
- Shot negotiating with dealer. Spreads out damp skin. Subtitled conversation: 'How long is it?' - 'You measure it'. Dealer uses his hand. 'This is from Pekanburu [also Indonesia]. 1.8 metres. The small one's only 1.5 metres. I'll give you x00,000 ?rupiah [subtitles £80]' - 'I think it's worth at least x00,000 [subtitle says £130].' - 'Let's make a deal on x00,000 [£100]' -'There are not many tigers left. I kill monkeys [shot of skulls] and lizards for their skins [shot of ?axolotl with edged weapon driven through its head] ... I sell them. I don't know who buys them. I have to feed my children. What can I do? I don't want them to grow up like me. They must go to school. I haven't taught them to hunt..' [Shots of little, light brown, black-haired native children]
- Some are smuggled to taxidermists in Singapore [and another town mentioned]. Shot of obviously false red gums and fake eyes, mouth open, of tiger rug.
- NOTE: Total cost of filmed expedition must have been [say: commentator, four man crew, two weeks of travel? - say about 4 return flights, flights within Indonesia, eight weeks of hotels and food, cost of tapes, cost of editing...
£25000 minimum?
Could presumably have paid him £2000 NOT to shoot 20 tigers.
Tiger Moths
- Found what I take to be a 'woolly bear' mid August 1994 wandering on walls; confined with a few leaves, it didn't eat (and I wasn't sure it wasn't shrivelling up) but in fact it shrank, leaving itself surrounded by ball of detached brown hairs and pupa inside - starting as rich brown, going darker to almost black in a few days so it looks like a little chunk of glossy dark wood in its oval woolly ball. With the head and little legs etc of the skin attached to the tail end of the pupa, which is 15 mm long.
- Note: reincarnation? rebirth? Looking at this small thing - and remembering a 'chrysalis' explicitly has reference to gold (though I don't know if it's an actual ancient Greek word) with its hard inert shell and evident head end with stylised headpiece and wings - is this why the Egyptians embalmed some dead and put them in a sarcophagus; does it suggest the idea of re-emergence?
Tortoises
[1] Adapted to hot dry climates; they eat green shoots containing sap, and store 'a clear liquid' under their shells.
[2] Fight over females: shove each other [have patch under chin to help, and help with motion generally over rocks etc] and loser ends upside down. Not clear how an inverted tortoise reverts to normal.
Trees [Alder/ Ash/ Aspen/ Beech/ Black Beech/ Box/ Cedars/ Cherry/ Dawn Redwood/ Dawyck Beech/ Ebony = Mpingo/ Elm/ Giant Redwood/ Gingko/ Gum/ Hawthorn and Scrub/ Holly/ Horse Chestnut/ Juniper/ Laburnum/ Linden/ Lombardy Poplar/ London Plane/ Mahogany/ Maple/ Maritime Pine/ Mount Etna Broom/ Mulberry/ Sassafras/ Stone Pine = Umbrella Pine/ Strawberry Tree = Arbutus/ Sycamore/ Willow/ Witch Hazel/ Yew]
- For what I hope could be an amusing account of the difficulties involved in using ordinary books, see my notes in . [To be fair, Kilbracken does say his book can't be used during the winter months]. The same sort of criticisms apply to flower identification books.
- Note: appearance-ism, valuing just because of appearance: From Mitchell & Wilkinson, 'Trees of Britain and Northern Europe' (1982, 1988):
8: 'Gardenworthiness... rated as I, II, III, or X.. ... III An ordinary, mediocre tree, rather dull and lacking any striking feature, though without serious fault. Or a tree with good points but also marked faults. ...
'MONTEZUMA PINE .. a complex of Mexican pines.. the form typical in Britain.. is not known in the wild now. There are fine broad-crowned trees like this in many western gardens and at Sheffield Park, Sussex ..'
'CORK OAK .. Mediterranean tree that grows happily to the far north of Scotland.. Even there [SW England] good trees are few as it is a slow, ungainly tree and may rest some branches on the ground. With its dull foliage and gloomy aspect as well, the curious bark is the only excuse for growing it. The cork of everyday use is stripped from trees in Spain and Portugal, leaving them dark red before it regrows, with the inner layers and cambium unharmed.'
'JUDAS TREE .. brought from the Near East before the flowers were appreciated for ornament but when sugar was rare; their sweetness was valued. Petals.. were used to sweeten salads. .. It bears upright branches but droops with age and the whole tree may bend down when senile. ..'
'OLIVER'S LIME.. discovered in 1888.. Hupeh Province, China. Early trees are in only a few collections but the tree itself is so handsome that all who know it plant it if they can. The 'chinaman's moustaches' are prominent over branch scars on the otherwise grey bark. Shots of the lower crown droop and.. etc'
'TRANSCAUCASIAN BIRCH.. interesting little tree.. mainly in the gardens of plantsmen who value its unusual shape and fine autumn colours..'
- Idea I recall from primary school, that trees resemble their leaves in shape; utter nonsense: e.g. juniper a tall column, with trifoliate leaves each of ordinary shape; trees with 'needles', none of course needle shaped; elm tall straggly rectangle, with common pear-shaped-but-pointed and serrated leaves. Oak seems to be the tree from which this silly idea came.
- Note: Why do some trees have needle-shaped leaves? Struck me that perhaps tolerance of occasional high wind could be the reason; large floppy leaves, though I imagine better for surface area, are presumably more likely to tear or be pulled off in high winds. Another factor perhaps is moisture: I recall being told that larger leaves transpire more, though whether this takes account of overall efficiency, i.e. surface area too, I don't know
- ALDER: 'A native tree found in all parts beside streams and ponds.' identifiable as it has both catkins, yellowish in march, and small female 'flowers' which are about a centimetre long, and form cone-like things, on the same tree. There are several species.
- ASH: Over winter, this has clusters of withered brownish pods hanging down [pods say three or four inches long; bunch of perhaps twenty] which is quite distinctive
- ASPEN: This is the one with exceptionally large catkins; many of these, with round leaves, on ground in March say. It's a type of poplar, [Popsomething] tremulans. This makes it sound trembly, but apparently it's an exceptionally robust tree. [Radio Sussex item 18 Mar, 1992 on matches: they're made from aspen, which a supposedly technical person described as 'weed of the forest.. if you cut them down they regenerate not one, but several aspens' which sounded like any coppice tree. Probably he meant it's a strange shape and therefore suitable only for chopping into tiny bits, or something like that. About a week before I'd noticed Zoe of Psychical Research storing her used matches in her box, for compost; they've obviously become aware of 'green' criticism]
- BEECH: Smooth grey bark, never grows fissured/ alternate leaves which are oval with wavy margins and parallel veins, with small teeth; cp elm/ male flowers grow in small yellow clusters from long stalks, amid cluster of leaves if Kilbracken's drawing is accurate. Female flowers are inconspicuous but turn into 'fruit', beech-mast, green and soft, then brown and woody. Four segments release two nuts. 'Autumn.. foliage turns yellow, the reddish-brown.' Shape
seems pretty much round with flattened base, although taller ones - 40 m, like elm - seem more cylindrical. Copper, and other beeches, are described as cultivars
- BLACK BEECH: '.. from New Zealand has the smallest leaves of any broad-leaved tree we grow.' [Mitchell & Wilkinson]
- BOX: Mitchell and Wilkinson say: '.. the last native tree to cross into England before the Channel opened. A few wild stands grow on chalk in Kent, Surrey and the Chiltern Hills and on limestone in Glos. ..' [Not clear whether this southern distribution is the evidence for its being the last across].
'.. almost certainly native tree in S England .. very small number of localities on chalk and limestone.. best known is Box Hill.. steep slope nearly 120 m high.. being actively cut back by the River Mole.. mixed wood of box and yew. .. slope.. almost 40 degrees, and the constant river erosion of its base, make the surface unstable and devoid of soil. In these extreme conditions only box, with some yew and whitebeam, seem able to maintain themselves.. clearly .. similar situation.. yew forms pure woods in a few places on chalk. Box.. like yew in its capacity to thrive on these steep slopes, in being evergreen, and in casting a dense shade so that seedlings of other woody plants [sic; why not all plants?] cannot readily establish themselves.. only.. slopes.. or rabbits so numerous.. is beech excluded
Box [Buxus sempervirens) .. coppiced for their valuable timber.. yellow.. very hard and heavy.. for turning, carving,.. woodcuts, wood engravings..' [Oxford Book of Trees, 1975, p70. Illustration shows spindly trunks with leaves at the top; these are about a cm long, say, darkish green, arranged in pairs along straight branches, and with flowers arranged along them too. Little or no ground cover.] Mitchell & Wilkinson add the timber is 'heavy enough to sink in water.'
- BROOM: Can develop slow growing clump, resembling a birds nest, or slightly like sycamore, called 'witches broom' at least in some country areas. TV programme not clear what caused it; perhaps insect attack.
- CEDARS: 'Three grow commonly in British Isles: Atlas Cedar = Atlantic Cedar, Deodar = Himalayan Cedar [from Sanskrit deva+deru = god + wood, or something similar], Cedar of Lebanon.' They all have egg-shaped 'cones' which start green, ripen to brown. However, the 'general direction taken by the tips of their branches' is the clue: "Atlas ascend, Deodar descend, Lebanon are level" says Kilbracken. So, the impressive ones with branches sweeping the ground and with a cone-shape are deodars, not cedars of Lebanon, which have a more cartoon-cloud quality
CHINESE CEDAR [Note: 'Scientific' name confusion:] Cedrela sinensis in fact of the Mahogany family, called Meliaceae, from the Greek for ash [! [sic]], 'is closely related to the Spanish Cedar used for cigar-boxes. They are both called 'cedar' because of their fragrant timber. ..' [Mitchell & Wilkinson]
- CHERRY: Most trees in spring with white or pink blossom are cherry, implies Kilbracken. Bird cherry has bark smelling of cyanide, with horizontal patterns of small fissures, and flowers which hang down in long clusters; and the Gean or wild cherry has white flowers, which come out before the leaves, and 'are a delight at Easter'. These 'grow in bunches from woody bases or from the branch itself.' Kilbracken adds these two are the only one to grow in woodland or hedgerows; he's omitted all the large number of different ornamental species.. with very showy pink or white flowers.' In March, I was puzzled until I read this, because all the pink-flowering trees had blossoms which obviously weren't in trailing bunches.
- DAWYCK BEECH: [Note: a mutation, presumably:] '.. found in a plantation at Dawyck, Peebles and brought down to the garden [sic] in about 1860. A few well-known gardens received grafts in 1907 but the first public planting was done in 1937 on the Basingstoke bypass. Some outer shoots curving loosely down out of the crown of big trees distinguish them in winter from Lombardy Poplars. 8 -
12 - 29m.' [From Mitchell & Wilkinson]
- DAWN REDWOOD: Metasequoia glyptostroboides. 'one of the few deciduous conifers and the only common one with needles .. in herring-bone. .. forest tree in its native China, reaches 35m, but has not yet exceeded 20 m in Britain' says Kilbracken. There are two specimens right at the minor entrance to Hampton Court [near the Maze/ Tiltyard court restaurant and National Trust shop, and just after a very white birch, a variety with exceptionally white bark with markings arranged cylindrically around the trunks]. They look very straight indeed. Branches all curve a little up, somewhat like Lombardy poplar, but less so.
- EBONY = MPINGO:
- See notes on Attenborough in
- See notes under volcanoes for other species which live in areas with intermittent catastrophe [fire is a threat in the bush]
- ELM: I always confused this with beech, because of its leaf shape. Elm has serrated leaves; apparently the tops of the leaves are hairy, 'like emery paper or stubble', though not the undersides. 'Small crimson flowers.. noticeable.. appear not later than March.. long before the leaves. Also has 'fruit containing a single seed': single-wing seed, flat round translucent brownish growth with seed fairly near the centre, which fall in July. 'The bark is divided by long fissures.. almost always grows with a single straight stem.. reaches 40 metres..' Shape is cylindrical with rounded top and foliage has slight bias to top.
- GIANT REDWOOD: First introduced into Britain in 1853. TV programme 1994 shows enthusiast for trees punching it: the bark is so spongy it can be punched without damage to the tree or to your hands; he says.
- GINGKO: Famous for being evolutionarily old: around in the time of dinosaurs, we're told.
- GUM: [eucalyptus is the 'scientific' or generic name] ##
- HAWTHORN AND SCRUB: Seem to be several rather dissimilar types, which is confusing; a common country one is shortish, with greyish trunk and not many spines, and with small palmate leaves which grow in clusters around individual roundish berries; typically in or around hedges, sides of fields. The point about scrub is that e.g. burnt land or land which is over grazed or starts getting overgrown after cultivation is that hawthorn and things like bramble, which has seeds spread by birds, or gorse and broom [latter has explosive-type seeds] colonise ground quite fast; they may have suckers too, or arcs of branches which grow; apparently bramble does this. Elder and wayfaring tree are unpleasant to grazing animals, too. However, the really important point, says Oxford book, is that such growths harbour young trees, which grow slowly, but eventually overshade the scrub plants, and replace them by woodland.
- HOLLY: Holly trees were apparently planted beside houses to act as lightning-conductors in, I think, the Isle of Wight. No further information though. Reported in BBC TV farm program Sun 22 Mar, 1992, among the pesticide promotion etc
- HORSE CHESTNUT: Early March: they do have sticky buds on the ends of their branches and twigs! What the point is, is obscure to me; might expect them to be covered with small flies etc. Perhaps it's a device to keep small caterpillars from entering the hefty buds?
- JUNIPER: ##
- LABURNUM: One of the few trees reliably identifiable on a walk in early March; it's small, 'often no more than a shrub', and 'is the only species in this book that always has trifoliate leaves.' At this time of year they have no leaves, but there are still seed pods, dried brown things like smaller versions of peapods containing black seeds, 'which are extremely poisonous.' The seeds didn't seem particularly shiny, in fact. It's also called Golden Rain, presumably suggesting the name given to an unusual sexual practice, after its 'hanging clusters of bright yellow flowers, 'which may sometimes reach 30 cms',
i.e. about a foot. During May and June, .. impossible to miss.. even in the heart of cities.' I wondered whether 'laburnum' is a Latin word; perhaps the Borgias used their seeds?
- LIMES: Kilbracken lists four, all of species tilia, and implies there are [many?] more: They all seem to have similar leaf shape [heart-shaped, toothed], fruit [round things on stalks attached to a long thin leaf], and flowers [little yellow ones].
SMALL-LEAVED LIME: In fact seems to have hairy leaves especially on the upper side and leaf size 'may not be a certain guide' [sic]
LARGE-LEAVED LIME = BROAD-LEAVED LIME: Hairless leaves except perhaps tufts on undersides; these two trees 'seldom exceed 25-30 m.'
COMMON LIME = EUROPEAN LIME, is a 'hybrid of the other two' i.e. small-leaved and large-leaved; it can reach 50 metres, taller than any other tree in Britain except conifers.
SILVER LIME: 'Downy grey hairs on the under surfaces of its leaves, so they are green above and silvery-grey below.' 'Seldom exceeds 24 m.'
- LINDEN: [No information on this; except 'Linden Lea' and 'Unter den Linden' vaguely suggest things] ##
- LOMBARDY POPLAR: [NB: Cp. Dawyck beech] Says in Oxford book it's probably a mutation; most trees are male, and they're propagated by cuttings. Worth noting the tendency of the branches, event the lowest, to curve up towards the sky. Populus nigra var. 'Italica'. 'so often planted along the roads of France', says Kilbracken. Grows quickly, reaches 30m; the quick-growing conifer of its day? Mitchell & Wilkinson say there are about 30 northern poplars, 'mostly of rapid growth to great size'. Lombardy Poplar was brought to St Osyth from Turin in 1758. 'Cuttings from it were soon growing fast in all parts of the British Isles, all too often in lines which jar on the landscape and are liable to be ruined by the loss of one or more trees. But they make splendid tight groups.' I suddenly noted lines of these one Sunday in November 1993, walking by the river near Marlow. [Females have bigger branches fanning out slightly; most of them seem to be males, and presumably virtually all must be planted deliberately.
I had assumed, and hoped since it might destroy a landscape myth, that Lombardy poplars were comparatively recent in Italy, but re-reading most of the popular references available to me left this point in doubt.
These are deciduous, not coniferous.
Note that the other poplars, oriental, black, Black Italian = Serotina, Grey, White, all are ordinary-looking trees with catkins, so presumably 'Lombardy' is essential to convey the idea of this upsweeping or fastigiate tree
- LONDON PLANE: An introduction. c 1680, says Mitchell & Wilkinson
- MAHOGANY: In about Chippendale's time, the source switched from Cuba to Honduras (says 'Antiques Road Show')
- MAPLE: NB: There's a Père David's Maple, introduced 1879, found in China
- MARITIME PINE: Oxford book says planted in great number in south-west France for turpentine. Another reference says they're used for windbreaks in sand near sea. Confusable with stone pine, at least in the book, until you realise the shapes are different.
- MOUNT ETNA BROOM: '.. from Etna.. wild also in Sardinia.. a few tiny narrow leaves to 1 cm long and most of the work of the leaves, photosynthesis, is done in the shoots, which are thus bright green for many years. This makes it as green in winter as in summer. ..' [Mitchell & Wilkinson]
- MULBERRY: Tree which 'never grows to more than 10 metres'. It grows fruit, which, to my surprise, 'look like raspberries' and 'turn from green to red to purple-black, when they become soft and good to eat.' [I.e. presumably like blackberries!] I was surprised to read this.
- SASSAFRAS: Sassafras tree of US is rare, at least here; it has delicious edible leaves - used for laxative purposes
- STONE PINE = UMBRELLA PINE: 'Umbrella Pine' says Mitchell & Wilkinson.
Specimen outside Hampton Court gardens by the river: comic trying to identify it from a book, because the needles are all far out of reach, though it's possible to see they're long and thick. 'The bark has vertical fissures and is often reddish-brown or purplish' says Kilbracken of the Maritime pine; seems to apply to this too - yellowish-orange bark, not rough, but in chunks with crevices, and with several hefty trunks bare of branches until near the top, where they form the umbrella.
- Mitchell and Wilkinson have a 'Japanese Umbrella Pine' which looks different, i.e. triangular shape reaching the ground and with a pointed apex, from previous; moreover it's 'not a pine in the modern sense of the word.. peculiar redwood .. but remotely related to any living plant.. found in Japan..' It gets its name from its leaves [what I'd describe as needles] which are 'whorled - .. like spokes of an umbrella.'
- STRAWBERRY TREE, ARBUTUS: 'Commonest in south-west Ireland, where it grows wild. Also planted in gardens' says Kilbracken. Fruits somewhat resemble wild strawberries [picture shows cluster of four or six under toothed leaves]. 'The fruit takes a year to ripen from green to scarlet and is edible but not tasty.' Its name is arbutus unedo; I remember a song about the arbutus tree in primary school; maybe this is it?
- SYCAMORE: 'Native from Northern France to the Black Sea.. may have been brought by the Romans. It can reach 35m and two are 2.3m in diameter. It can live for 400 years. Young trees can grow very fast; over 2m in a year. ...' [Note: from Forestry Commission Booklet No 38; this is typical of the sort of information they put in]
- WILLOW: More than any other tree is good for coppicing: small shoots, about I think finger size, grow, and the very many shoots grow very straight; they're also easy to strip. Each shoot grows to about six feet in a year - the growing season being a surprisingly short three months or so. For these reasons willow was, and perhaps is, very important in the basket weaving trades.
- WITCH HAZEL: Hamamelis Intermedia seems to be this, according to Wisley; there are many varieties. Another Hamamelis was called 'Chinese Witch Hazel'. This may be a shrub rather than a tree for all I know.
- YEW: [Taxus Baccata] has outer growth as sort of crown around 'old pioneer trees [which] form the core of the wood'. These outer branches point outward, some touch the ground. Yew of course has small needles about a cm long arranged in tidy herringbones. And produces the red berries which one gathers are unique.
End on 1993: cancer 'breakthrough' announced involving yew bark extract. Unfortunately, about 6 trees are needed for one treatment. The active ingredient is I think called ?taxol
Rather oddly, the poisonous nature seems in some doubt; a MAFF book said the red part of the berry seems non-poisonous, and the seeds don't seem poisonous if swallowed whole. The only evidence of poisoning was a 1975 case of a German woman who ate several handfuls of foliage and died some time later.
Trees: Commercial Uses
-Box Hill. See e.g. leaflet 'Hills of Surrey' for uses of boxwood in woodcuts, instruments, rules, as it's very dense. ('Only English wood which sinks in water'.)
-As fuel. In Kent etc was used to help work iron, with ?tilt-hammers worked by hammerponds. Evelyn complained about tree-cutting. See 'Hills of Surrey'
-Hardwoods and softwoods: division is between deciduous trees, 'hardwoods', and conifers 'softwoods', at least in UK.
- Mitchell & Wilkinson [1982]: 'There is almost no forestry now for specialised timbers. The Bat Willow is grown for cricket-bats, in small groups and along ditches and rivers in the south-east. Hybrid black poplars are used for making match-boxes, pallets and fruit-trays. Common Ash is the best wood for high-quality sports goods, if grown fast and regularly. .. Sycamore is best for
kitchenware, having a hard smooth white surface that takes no stain from food nor gives it any taint. Horse Chestnut is used for toys and artificial limbs since it does not splinter when broken. Lime is similar and carves well. Yew is very strong and hard; it is used in some furniture, often for the arms of chairs. Elm has a good figure and is hardwearing, so is used for seats, benches and staircase treads. It also withstands frequent drying and wetting, so like Alder (which is even better, but not found in big sizes) it is used in canal and dock constructions.'
Trees: Deforestation, Afforestation
- Near Glencoe, on OS map, is bare hill: 'Royal Forest'; cp. 'Forest of Bowland' region near Liverpool, New Scientist letter on 'Forest of Skiddaw' etc. BUT see my notes in on true meaning of word 'forest' as royal preserve, no necessary connection with trees
- New Scientist on Thailand, Sarawak, Borneo, Madagascar, USA etc deforestation
- New Scientist: Afforestation projects by the Dutch and in England
- 6 Jan, 1992: ITV, 'World in Action' 25 minutes, Producer Don Jordan. 'Japanese big business has already deforested large areas of South East Asia. It is now consuming the tropical rainforests of Borneo, endangering the livelihoods of tribal people - all for plywood mouldings in concrete buildings.' Picture caption: 'Log jamboree? With the rainforests of Thailand, the Philippines and West Malaysia exhausted, Japan's insatiable appetite for timber has brought big business to Sarawak.'
- Spring 1993 national trust magazine: 'Madam [sic], It is surprising that Chris Baines should say that alien plantations rarely reflect the soil underneath (spring 1992 issue). In fact it is precisely because they do match the soils of our uplands that exotic trees have been extensively planted on such sites. But for the degradation [sic] of these soils for 200 years of sheep grazing, and the progressive removal of soil nutrients in wool and meat during these years, there would be considerable fewer 'alien' trees in the new upland forests. With the degraded state of our upland soils, these are often the only species that can be grown successfully when denuded sites are returned [sic] to forest cover. Professor Jack V Thirgood, Rothbury, Northumberland. [Doesn't state what he is, or was, professor of]
- Mitchell & Wilkinson, 'The Trees of Britain and Northern Europe' [1982]: 'Forestry. Growing trees commercially is very different from growing them singly or as specimen groups. The outlay on buying, draining and preparing the land is such that unless there are some returns in the early stages, the final crop can never make enough money to be profitable. This is achieved by periodic thinnings. Where some 2500 trees are planted to the hectare - spaced in rows 2 m each way, usually 30 cm high and 2-3 years old - only about 250 remain as the final crop, the others being taken out at about the 15th year and every 3-5 years thereafter. There are a dozen different systems: forestry is very largely the art of thinning.
The market is 90% for softwoods, and the land available is almost entirely that which is too poor for agriculture: high quality hardwoods will not grow well on it but many conifers will make splendid crops. Sitka Spruce outgrows and outyields any other over huge areas with high rainfall, but according to height and soil conditions other species may do better: Douglas Fir, Grand Fir, Japanese Larch, Shore Pine; or where spring frosts or low rainfall rule out Sitka Spruce, Norway Spruce; and on southern sandy heaths Corsican Pine and now also Monterey and Bishop Pines. On southern high open chalkland the forest will eventually be Beech but Beech will not grow there unaided at first, and will yield no early return at all. So they are planted with a mixture of Western Hemlock, European Larch, Western Red Cedar or Lawson Cypress to shelter the Beeches and to be removed periodically, making the early years profitable.
In a few areas where planting can be done on rich southern lowland soils, old oakwoods were until recently replaced by fast-growing Douglas and Grand Fir
or European Larch. But now there is a policy to conserve these fine oakwoods and Common and Sessile Oaks are planted, although they can never be financially profitable.'
Trees: Excretion?
- See Mensa mags Nov 1995, Brian J Ford on an article in Nature [no details] apparently the source of the idea that trees excrete (sc. presumably solid stuff, e.g. heavy metals; not water vapour, CO2) by dropping leaves.
Trees: Grafting
-Fantastic examples grown around 1960, I think in Germany:-
-Heart shape; branch divides, leaving circle; another grows through; cathedral effect - row of trees, branches entwined, all leaning in to top - when finished, would have cathedral window appearance; lattice-like tree - several - maybe six - subdivided to touch neighbours in diamond pattern. Had to have support while growing - like scaffolding - and took 6,8,10 years. Moreover, tended to grow out with time - e.g. branch through loop would thicken, so whole lot would grow together in a knot.
Trees: Growth and Tropisms
- Mensa Q&A: 'Why do the trees in Britain not all slope to the south a bit, since that is where most of the light comes from?' Answer must surely be that geotropism determines the way the trunk and structure grow, while phototropism only determines which way the leaves turn. Of course there's also: the question of clear days vs overcast, since in the latter case light is omni-directional (unless, presumably, you're sensitive to polarised light). The percentage rate at which light is actually used in photosynthesis. And the question of other limiting factors like CO2 and water; if these are short, there's no point maximising light on leaves.
- Michael Deans thinks that branch and twig growth must be controlled by gases given off, otherwise they'd touch and rub against each other, whereas this hardly happens. Suggests to me that nozzles giving out tiny streams of gas could cause trees to grow in weirdly contorted shapes, e.g. like bonsai, or perhaps in spirals or a new, superior type of topiary.
Trees: Native & Introduced
- From Mitchell & Wilkinson: 'The primeval richness in species of temperate forests is no longer found in N Europe, but only in China, Japan and North America, where the mountain ranges run north-south and provided areas of southerly refuge during Ice Ages. As the ice came south, the plants could retreat before it at their preferred altitude, and then return. Thus in the Allegheny Mountains of the eastern USA today, an American beech is not, as .. in Europe, surrounded by other beeches, in a beechwood. It is among a profusion of other trees. The next beech may be 40 species away.
But in Europe the mountains formed a nearly complete barrier from Spain to Poland, and immediately south of them, sealing the gaps, lay the Mediterranean Sea. [sic; is this right?] Also, the old flora had already been gradually thinned for millions of years by the northward movement of the land-mass, so that much of Europe now has the same latitude as from Hudson Bay to the Great Lakes, with a similar paucity of species.
For the British Isles it was worse still. At the height of the ice, there were no trees at all in what is now Britain, and the only species that could return were those near the land-connection and a few in SW Ireland (and a south-western land refuge, now gone). [I presume a reference to 'Lyonesse'?] Then melting ice raised sea-levels, Britain was an island, and no more trees could come.
Our only native conifers are thus Scots Pine, Common Juniper, and Yew. Of broadleafed trees, Silver and downy Birches, Bay Willow, Aspen, Wych Elm, Sallow, Alder and Bird Cherry were early invaders, then Rowan, Hazel, Holly, Ash, Sessile Oak and Small-Leafed Lime. This last was to become the dominant woodland tree in England until man over-utilised it and favoured the oaks. Common Oak, Crack and probably White Willow were followed by Wild Cherry, Black Poplar, Whitebeam, Hawthorn and Field Maple, Hornbeam, Broad-leafed Lime and Box. That adds up to our 33 native species. A complex series of whitebeam hybrids with tiny populations in places like the Avon Gorge.. could add a dozen more, but they are not full species. All other trees, in this country and in this book, have been introduced by man.'
[The book has an appendix of about 1000 tree species, I think in the same order as in the book, plus some, not found in the book interpolated in the appropriate place, giving information which includes, where known, the date of introduction, and CFOR for common/ frequent/ occasional/ rare, sometimes qualified e.g. by (SW). A sampling of typical dates gives, after sorting:
Native/ Native/ Native/ Native/ Romans/ Early/ 1550 c/ 1620/ 1636 c/ 1650 pre/ 1650/ 1683/ 1691/ 1700 c/ 1736/ 1754/ 1756/ 1760/ 1767/ 1780 pre/ 1795/ 1800/ 1800/ 1815/ 1818 pre/ 1824/ 1827/ 1830/ 1836/ 1837/ 1837 pre/ 1837/ 1840/ 1854/ 1854/ 1854/ 1854/ 1857/ 1860 pre/ 1860/ 1861/ 1863/ 1874/ 1879/ 1879/ 1890/ 1908/ 1908/ 1910/ 1920 c/ 1923/ 1925
Suggesting that the first half of the 19th Century was the high point of the import of new species
Trees: Attempt at Overview by Encarta
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Trees are popularly grouped into two broad categories: evergreen and deciduous trees. (These categories do not correspond strictly to the scientific classifications described below.) Evergreens are those that bear foliage throughout each year, constantly shedding a small proportion of the older leaves and replacing them with new leaves. Two evergreen leaf types are common: (1) needle leaf, typified by the tough, narrow or scalelike resinous leaves of most conifers; and (2) broadleaf angiosperms, most common in tropical areas, but found in temperate areas as well. Deciduous trees are broad-leaved and lose their foliage each year, usually at the approach of the coldest and/or darkest season.
Classification
All trees are seed-bearing plants, either gymnosperms, mostly cone-bearing plants commonly called softwoods, or angiosperms, which are flowering plants, the trees of which are commonly called hardwoods (see ANGIOSPERM; GYMNOSPERM). The angiosperms are further divided into two classes, the Liliopsida (monocots) and the Magnoliopsida (dicots), depending on seed structure. Of the 60,000 to 70,000 species of trees, all are dicotyledonous except a few hundred monocotyledonous species and less than 1000 gymnospermous species.
All five living orders of gymnosperms consist primarily of tree species; the most important gymnosperm orders are the Pinales and Taxales, comprising the conifers (see CONIFER). Among the angiosperms, few tree species are monocots. The only monocotyledonous family containing a preponderance of tree species is the palm family, Areceae, the genera of which are native to tropical and subtropical regions throughout the world. The dicots include most of the broad-leaved trees, which are distributed throughout the world.
In the U.S., native trees belong to about 850 species, which are classified in 222 genera and 69 plant families. Of this total, about 300 species belong to the oak genus, Quercus (see OAK). Other large genera of American trees are Crataegus, the hawthorns; Pinus, the pines; and Salix, the willows (see HAWTHORN; PINE; WILLOW). About 110 other species native to the U.S. are tropical or subtropical trees restricted to Florida. In addition, about 60 species of trees from Europe and Asia are naturalized in the U.S. after centuries of cultivation, and more than 200 species of foreign trees are commonly grown in the U.S. as ornamental, shade, and fruit trees. Tree species
make up about 3.5 percent of the plant species found in the U.S.
Evolution
Trees have existed since the Devonian period of the Paleozoic era (see GEOLOGY: THE GEOLOGIC TIME SCALE). The oldest trees known to paleobotanists are those of the genus Cordaites, which originated in the early Devonian period and became extinct by the end of the Paleozoic era. The oldest known surviving order of trees, the broad-leaved, gymnospermous Ginkgoales, is now represented by a single species, the maidenhair tree, Ginkgo biloba (see GINKGO). Coniferous trees have existed since the middle of the Carboniferous period. Angiospermous trees first appeared in the lower Cretaceous period of the Mesozoic era, and by the beginning of the Pliocene epoch of the Cenozoic era virtually all tree genera now in existence were growing profusely. The majority of fossil tree leaves found in Pliocene rocks are indistinguishable from leaves of present-day trees. See also PALEONTOLOGY.
Climate and Soil Requirements
Trees grow wherever adequate groundwater is available for the major portion of the year. Trees do not grow profusely in desert areas or in areas in which the groundwater table is sufficient only for grassland vegetation; in such areas trees grow successfully only under careful cultivation, in desert oases, or along the banks of rivers and streams. Moreover, in areas bordering a grassland or desert, trees are frequently stunted and gnarled in growth. In high mountains or at the edge of the northern coniferous forests, such scattered, stunted, twisted trees are called krummholz. Under optimum conditions, however, trees grow in large aggregations called forests (see FOREST).
The climatic and soil requirements of trees are somewhat different for each species. Most tree species grow over large areas, of which only a small proportion permits optimum growth of the plant. The most common tree species in a given area is called the dominant species of the area. In the eastern U.S., for example, spruce and fir are dominant in Maine and northern New York; beech, birch, and maple in the southern portions of New York, Michigan, and Wisconsin; longleaf, loblolly, and slash pines in the Gulf states; and oak and hickory in most of the remaining areas of the eastern U.S. Some of the states have chosen the blossoms of characteristic native and cultivated trees as state flowers; apple, Malus pumila, for example, is the state flower of both Michigan and Arkansas.
Life Processes
Most of the physiological processes undergone by trees are common to all higher plants (see PLANT). Because the structure of all trees is basically similar, many processes are carried on in uniform ways by most trees.
Basic Structure
Growth of trees, like that of shrubs, requires the successive addition of many layers of woody tissue to the stem of the original young seedling. The axis, or root and stem, of a tree seedling is divided into three main layers. The outermost layer, called the epidermis, is composed of thin-walled cells and protects the inner layers of the axis. The middle layer, called the cortex, is composed of larger, thin-walled cells, which function temporarily as storage cells. The innermost layer, or stele, is composed of a layer of tough pericyclic cells, a multicellular layer of phloem cells, a multicellular layer of xylem, or wood, cells, and an inner core of thin-walled cells that is called pith. See PHLOEM; ROOT; STEM; XYLEM.
Embryonic Growth
Early in the development of the plant, an embryonic layer of cells, called the cambium, develops between the phloem and xylem layers. The cambium layer alternately produces additional phloem and xylem cells by constant division. When a cambium cell divides to form xylem cells, the inner of the two resulting cells develops into a xylem cell. The outer cell continues to function as cambium in the next division, in which the outer cell develops into a phloem
cell and the inner cell continues to function as cambium. Many more xylem cells are produced than phloem cells.
Development
The constant divisions of the cambium gradually increase the circumference of the axis. The cambium continually increases in circumference as the area of wood enlarges from the increase in xylem cells, but the tissues outside the cambiumùnamely, phloem, pericycle, cortex, and epidermisùsoon rupture, form deep fissures, and eventually split off. A new cambium, called the cork cambium, or phellogen, develops outside the phloem and produces successive layers of cork cells that protect the axis. As the axis continues its expansion, the layers of cork frequently develop characteristic fissures at the surface, and as each cork cambium is split by the expansion of wood, a new cork cambium develops to replace it.
Maturity
At maturity, the tree axis normally consists of several layers of cork cells, the outer portion of which is fissured: the cork cambium, a few layers of crushed phloem, a few layers of functioning phloem, the cambium, and many layers of xylem. The xylem layers usually constitute more than 95 percent of the diameter of the axis. The xylem layers are collectively called wood, and the layers outside the cambium are collectively called bark. The cork cambium divides the bark into outer bark and inner bark.
Annual Rings
Because the xylem cells produced in the spring of the year are large and those produced later in the year are smaller, and because an interruption of growth occurs during the winter, the growth of wood for each year appears as a distinct ring, called an annual, or growth, ring. The width of each ring is affected by climate and other variables, and archaeologists have studied tree rings to determine the climatic conditions and variations in environment of former times. By starting with trees the ages of which are known and comparing their rings with those of trees of unknown age, archaeologists have worked out a chronology extending back some 4000 years. This tree-dating method, called dendrochronology, has been used to date ancient structures and buildings the wooden beams of which have been preserved (see DATING METHODS). Older annual rings are usually darkened and nonfunctional, and are collectively called heartwood; younger layers are lighter in color and function in transporting sap, and are therefore called sapwood.
Nutrition
The sapwood of the axis functions to carry water and dissolved mineral nutrients upward from the soil to the leaves (see OSMOSIS). In the leaves the water is used, in combination with carbon dioxide taken in through the leaves, in a process of food manufacture called photosynthesis. The sapwood also transports the gaseous products of respiration, which occurs in all living cells of the plant, to the leaves, from which the gases are released into the atmosphere. Food, manufactured by photosynthesis, and oxygen, absorbed from the air and used in respiration, are transported downward to the roots by the phloem.
Reproduction
Reproduction in trees, as in almost all other plants, involves the alternation of generations. Ovules and pollen may be borne in the same flower or the same inflorescence of a single tree. In most hollies, ashes, and maples, and in yew, juniper, and ginkgo, however, the trees are either ômaleö or ôfemale.ö Trees are usually wind- or insect-pollinated, but several species of birch produce fertile seeds without pollination.
Life Span
The normal age span of trees is different for each species. Some birches, for example, normally die after about 40 years of life. The sugar maple, on the other hand, frequently lives as long as 500 years, some oaks as long as 1500 years, some junipers as long as 2000 years, and some giant sequoias as long as
4000 years. Bristlecone pines, some almost 5000 years old, are the oldest living things.
Uses
Trees and tree products are among the most important commodities used by humans. For information on the growth of trees for timber and their subsequent use as wood, see FORESTRY; LUMBER INDUSTRY; WOOD; and separate articles on timber trees. For information on the use of trees as food sources, see FRUIT; HORTICULTURE; ORCHARD; and separate articles on common fruit trees. For use of trees in erosion control, see CONSERVATION; EROSION. Many trees are also used as ornamental plants in parks, along avenues and boulevards, and in gardens. >>
Truffles
- David Bellamy TV programme in April 1994 on these implied (though without detail) there are many types; the point is underground fungi, living symbiotically with tree roots, from which they obtain sugar while supplying nitrogen, don't have spore dispersal method above ground - though presumably they could have. Instead they develop sweetish and attractively-scented things somewhat like small potatoes which contain spores, which when eaten by mammals (such as, presumably, pigs in woodland) emerge in their shit able to grow into new fungus. The smell of course has evolved to be attractive to appropriate animals.
Turtles
-US Dept of the Interior Fish and Wildlife ?Criminal Investigation Dept. Patrols Florida beaches with Nightscopes [we can see criminals undetected].
Agent posed as wealthy playboy, restaurant owner. In two years established 300,000 turtle eggs per year being taken from lone beach at 50 cents each. Condominiums, roads etc mean many more young turtles perish through following lights rather than faint surf line at night
-Turtles have iron oxide in their heads; presumably therefore they [may] have magnetic navigation system
-Throughout S.E. Asia hunted for food [ie turtle soup] and because the shells are attractive - camouflage brown flecks, amber patterns, dark blobs. Hawksbill turtle artefacts in Bogota, Colombia. Showed investigators; painted horn imitation shells, but also mirrors and a wardrobe of shell. ['We have them a long time.. fifteen years'] The point is the trade was banned in 1974.
- Many found at customs. US customs man shown with seizure room. 'The word gets around - Going to Caracas? I bought a shell from a native on a beach but I got caught'. [Shots of baby crocodiles with pipes in mouth, stuffed in standing-up position]
Vampire Bat
Navigate in total darkness by echo. Noseleaf is a heat sensor, isolated from the bat's own body heat. It guides the bat 'to those tissues richest in blood.'
Volcanoes- effects on climate
[TV programme in March 1992, I think; no other details]
[1] Dust not a major effect [except locally!]. "Mount St Helens proved"
[2] Sulphur-rich eruptions cause sulphuric acid globules to form in upper atmosphere. [Showed results of satellite or aircraft sample measurements, not quite clear which: band spreading, eventually going all round equator, from a recent eruption. These clouds reflect light.] Might have been helpful had
they compared volcanic outputs with power stations.
[3] Note difficulties with calculating effects: El Nino effect is ?bistable and, when it's in its hot mode, is significant enough to need taking into account. [NB: means 'Christ-Child' as tends to coincide with Xmas. Warm water going west-east across mid-Pacific is nutrient-poor; normally there's a cold circulation east-west]
NOTE: El Nino explanation, or better explanation than before - hot salt water - in Times of 19 Sept 1989.
[4] HISTORIC EXAMPLES:
- Santorini, a Greek island, largest eruption ever
- Eruption of Tambora in ?Borneo in 1815; the effects of which Byron wrote about in 1816, when the sun didn't rise and there were only a few hours sunlight per day. Perhaps same (I haven't checked date) as Gilbert White, who wrote of a June-July when the sun was blood red ['ferrugineous'] at noon, even redder at rise/set, and the weather was stiflingly hot with lots of flies bothering horses. Benjamin Franklin credited with first postulating possible link between volcanoes and weather
- El Chichon, Mexico erupted in 1981 I think; I believe its SO2 and dust etc were sampled fairly thoroughly.
- Heklka 3 (in Iceland) erupted 1150 BC [the three refers to third known eruption, and largest.] Date established by tree ring analysis. Correlates with narrow tree rings in ?Scotland; its acid rain effect supposedly helped damage or wipe out the 'culture' there. This also coincides with O18 isotope taken from ice samples believed to go back to the same time [though I forget what its proportion is supposed to vary with]
Vultures
[1] Hunt communally - thousands of pairs of eyes scan earth's surface
[2] Central region of eye has two-and-a-half magnification. [TV prog didn't give focal length of eye - hard to interpret this statement, therefore. Still, nice idea that they have inbuilt binoculars]
Warning Colouration
- Notes above on salamanders (and ladybirds); I suppose I could add notes on wasps, below.
- See also my book on butterflies for warning colouration even across species
- Interesting idea I saw on TV Nov 1994: some racing pigeon people started to paint or stencil etc circles on the sings of their pigeons, since they believed there are more predatory birds around than before (something the RSPB denied). At any rate reports of lost birds have dropped almost to nothing.
Wasps
[1] A S.E. Asian wasp is the biggest insect - it waits by hive entrance, tries to catch bees; they fight back en masse, trying to smother it - heat it to death
[2] U.K. wasps praised as fascinating and beautiful by entomologists: "If you haven't been stung, you're culturally deprived" said one. "Look at their nests in winter, when they've all died off. Beautiful structures. They say the Chinese learnt to make paper by studying wasps' nests.."
- <3 July, 95: Boyd next door detected wasps entering and leaving his garage eaves - behind is a large hollow space under sloping tiles. Chap with chemicals & protective equipment (goggles, face breather mask, white top cover thing with face gauze, gloves) said wasps get wood - presumably rotting or crumbly - chew it and make the result into what he called paper maché. These nests grow - from say size of a head to the size of a plastic dustbin, he indicated. He also said he'd been stung twice on this visit.>
[Another paper invention theory, promulgated in Kew by Courtaulds, who are interested in fibres, is that the Chinese 'paper Mulberry tree' was the
earliest source of paper] And "The adults feed the young. And the young feed the adults! They are amazing..."
Water Boatman/ Whirligig beetle/ pond skater/ raft spider
Water boatman can detect polarised light because of their interest in water to live in, breed in, eat in. They can fly quite strongly. I.e. like polarised sunspecs, but the reverse - enhanced reception.
Whirligig beetle senses surroundings from reflections of water ripples - like echo principle
Pond skater [is this American?] uses ripples 'for a more sinister purpose', i.e. to detect possible prey
Raft spider has hairs on its legs 'sensitive to the slightest disturbance'
Water Vole/ 'Water Rat'
- [Note: myth? misnomer?] Sun 28 Nov 93 21:23: feeding swans at the riverside near Staines: saw a brownish rat-like creature jump into not-very-dense vegetation by the river.
Found to my surprise there's no such thing as a 'water rat': there are black rats [Rattus rattus] and brown rats [Rattus Norvegicus] and water voles, and also ground voles which apparently the water voles are believed to have displaced. But no 'water rat'.
Weasels
- See book 'Wildlife in Cornwall'. These are predators, smaller than stoats.
Weeds
- 'Real weeds' mentioned in Jan 1993 gardening programme - 'you pay' for our experts style of thing - Japanese knotweed, bindweed, mares tail.
- Obvious definition is a plant where you don't want it;
- But there's also a behavioural definition: any plant of which the seeds don't all germinate, so some are in reserve, and might come up next year
Whales: killer whales as entertainment/ low frequency sounds/ diving adaptations
[1] 'Sea World' in US has these in concrete tanks. 'Shamu' [I think this spelling is right] is a trade mark - in fact people who think they go to see 'Shamu' see one of a collection of these whales. Their lifespans in captivity don't seem too low to me - say ten years - but apparently this is much less than they're capable of.
[2] Use very low frequencies ['infrasound']. Special feature of oceans is that there are horizontal channels [I think caused by temperature banding, so sound keeps being focused in the same zone, like light pipe with different density glass on the outside]. 'Sound could easily traverse an entire ocean before the advent of noise pollution from ships.'
[3] Alveoli and tubes to them are strengthened all the way down, so they don't collapse under pressure, unlike man's.
[4] Whales' roads can fail in ways which aren't understood - by us or by whales! - so get occasional beached specimens.
Wild Cats
- See my notes on Ring of Bright Water, by Gavin Maxwell, in
- SPOTTED, South American: NB: seem to be spotted because they live in jungles; mottled or dappled effect better camouflage than stripes, which are more appropriate to long grass. [Baby deer have spotted backs. Some fish, like Stonefish, are mottled; presumably, bottom fish which live near the shore could
be expected to show this pattern]. Leopard [I think!] lives in trees. At any rate, most spotted cats are South American: jaguar; ocelot bit smaller; kodkod, oncilla, margay, ?Geoffroye's cat, all more or less small, some smaller than domestic cats, and found in jungles. In 60s and 70s huge trade in skins and elaborate routes I think through Paraguay or else through Colombia with fake papers, to US and Europe, mainly Athens for some reason. By 1990 some of these countries were burning confiscated pelts, as ivory is burnt in Africa, to show their seriousness.
- Beautiful spotted cat in Swiss Family Robinson
Wildebeest [vision]
-See horizontal strip - characteristic adaptation to veldt, because things appear stretched across horizon. See note on lions.
Woodcock [vision]
Two eyes on opposite sides of head. Somewhat protruding. Give 360 degree vision. NB: characteristic of defensive, or prey, creatures rather than predators, which look ahead, focusing on where they're going
Woodlouse/ Pill Millepede
- There seem to be the 'pill millepede' with lots of legs and the 'pill woodlouse' with fewer legs, both of which are rather shiny and can roll up.
- The woodlouse is a sort of matt grey (and incidentally very prone to dehydration) and doesn't roll up.
Yellow bellied sap sucker
- [A bird! - the main pest of maple syrup producers.] Uses maple syrup. Sugar maple 2% sugar. Red maple bit better, sugar maple best. Noo England maple trees dying. Could be pollution or disease - not sorted out yet. Apr 1989.
Zebras
- Males fight for females. Lots of barging and nipping of legs and necks. I think though they don't kick; too dangerous
Zoos
-[Birdworld, Sussex, has typed notice issued by Sussex:]
Licence to operate a zoo. 6 years subject to:
[1] modernisation of the side aviaries
[2] improved hospital room and holding pens
within reasonable time
-[Looe monkey sanctuary: see my notes in -cornwall]
======== END ========
---------------------------------
so sound keeps being focused in the same zone, like light pipe with different density glass on the outside]. 'Sound could easily traverse an entire ocean before the advent of noise pollution from ships.'
[3] Alveoli and tubes to them are strengthened all the way down, so they don't collapse under pressure, unlike man's.
[4] Whales' roads can fail in ways which aren't understood - by us or by whales! - so get occasional beached specimens.
Wild Cats
- See my notes on Ring of Bright Water, by Gavin Maxwell, in
- SPOTTED, South American: NB: seem to be spotted because they live in jungles; mottled or dappled effect better camouflage than stripes, which are more appropriate to long grass. [Baby deer have spotted backs. Some fish, like Stonefish, are mottled; presumably, bottom fish which live near the shore could
be expected to show this pattern]. Leopard [I think!] lives in trees. At any rate, most spotted cats are South American: jaguar; ocelot bit smaller; kodkod, oncilla, margay, ?Geoffroye's cat, all more or less small, some smaller than domestic cats, and found in jungles. In 60s and 70s huge trade in skins and elaborate routes I think through Paraguay or else through Colombia with fake papers, to US and Europe, mainly Athens for some reason. By 1990 some of these countries were burning confiscated pelts, as ivory is burnt in Africa, to show their seriousness.
- Beautiful spotted cat in Swiss Family Robinson
Wildebeest [vision]
-See horizontal strip - characteristic adaptation to veldt, because things appear stretched across horizon. See note on lions.
Woodcock [vision]
Two eyes on opposite sides of head. Somewhat protruding. Give 360 degree vision. NB: characteristic of defensive, or prey, creatures rather than predators, which look ahead, focusing on where they're going
Woodlouse/ Pill Millepede
- There seem to be the 'pill millepede' with lots of legs and the 'pill woodlouse' with fewer legs, both of which are rather shiny and can roll up.
- The woodlouse is a sort of matt grey (and incidentally very prone to dehydration) and doesn't roll up.
Yellow bellied sap sucker
- [A bird! - the main pest of maple syrup producers.] Uses maple syrup. Sugar maple 2% sugar. Red maple bit better, sugar maple best. Noo England maple trees dying. Could be pollution or disease - not sorted out yet. Apr 1989.
Zebras
- Males fight for females. Lots of barging and nipping of legs and necks. I think though they don't kick; too dangerous
Zoos
-[Birdworld, Sussex, has typed notice issued by Sussex:]
Licence to operate a zoo. 6 years subject to:
[1] modernisation of the side aviaries
[2] improved hospital room and holding pens
within reasonable time
-[Looe monkey sanctuary: see my notes in -cornwall]
======== END ========
16 pages of text. Good; even things mentioned in passing as illustrations are indexed.
But some names are omitted - e.g. Carr-Saunders on population, someone called Shipley 'On Life', and generally anything bibliographical, like sources, is underplayed.
NB bold numbers in the text, indicating illustrations, aren't bold here; these are always at the end of each list of page numbers & this explains apparent out-of-sequence-ness.
NB All the spelling I think is right; but some of the page numbers aren't and include symbols like I and ' for 1, and # for some character unrecognized by the scanner.
AARD-VARK, 235
Abdomen, 27; of lobster, 120
Abyssal zone: life in, 513. See Deep sea.
Acartia, 595
Achetina, 565
Acheulean culture, 492, 493
Acquired characters, inheritance of, 353-360
Acromegaly, 101
Actinozoa, 151
Activation, 93
Adamsia, 559
Adaptation to habitat, 505-507, 526
Adaptive radiation, 450-451
Adirondacks, 612
Adler, Alfred, 812, 814, 829, 836
Adolescence, 100
Adrenal gland, 67, 100, 101, 349, 724
Adrenin, 100, 102
Æpyornis, 273, 564, 565
Afghanistan, 540
Africa, 203, 229, 236, 238, 24I, 242, 243, 444, 474, 488; as possible region of man's origin, 484
African mammals, typical, 235
After-birth, the, 98
Agave, 541
Age,old. See Senility
Ages of rocks, 255-257
Agglutinins, 630
Agouti, 236
Agriculture, and sacrificial religion, 867 applications of modern biology to, 303-304 307 598, 609-617; importance of bacteria in, 183
Ague, 625-626
Air, and Sunlight, 646-652; as a habitat, 503; conquest of the, 453-457; of a stuffy room, 648-651; See also Respiration
Alaska, 470, 488, 490, 536
Albatross, 564
Albinism, 298, 305, 306
Albunea, 516
Alcohol, use and abuse of, 642-644, 645
Alcoholism and heredity, 359
Alcyonarians, 511
Alder, 590
Aleppo, 590
Alfonso XIII of Spain, 299
Algæ, 172, 173, I74, I76, 177, 401, 402, 426, 444
Alimentary canal. See Digestive system
Alligator, 113
Alligator-bug, 575
Alps, 199, 397, 486, 491
Alternation of generations, in animals, 140, 146; in plants, 162-I66, 427 sqq.
Amauris niavius, 576
Amazonian forest, 544-545
Amber, 201
Ambivalence in psychology, 810-811
Amblypods, 472, 471
Amboina, 611
Amherst pheasant, courtship of, 735
Amia, 445-446
Amino-acids, 49
Ammonite, 382, 421, 445, 420
Ammophila, 586, 695
Amoeba, I67-I70, 402, 665; and dysentery, 587; co-ordination of 673; compared with body cell, 169-170; movements of, 670, 67I; reproductions of, 170, 269, 169; sensitivity to light, 665
Amphibians, 114-115, 129:; brain and behaviour of, 728-730; evolution of, 437-442, 468-469, 440, 449; in coal-measure forest, 443; metamorphosis of, 115, 321-322; naked skin of, 115; number of species of, 730; poison of, 671
Amphidasys betularia, 361
Amphioxus, 117, 118, 124, 526
Amphitrite, 138
Amphitritus, 513
Anaconda, 211
anaerobic life, in bacteria, 181; in yeast, 176
Anaphylaxis, 647
Andrias scheuchzeri, 197
Anemone, plumose, 151
Angiosperms, 162, 462
Angler-fish, larva of, 515
Anhalonium, 825
Anilocra. 570
Animal forest, 511; light, 119. 521-522
Animal magnetism, 851
Animals, classification of, 109 '05, 130; contrasted with plants, 155, I76, I82; dependence upon plants, 578; Origin of, 40I; Sizes of, 561-563
Annelida, I37, 677
Anopheles maculipennis, 626
Antarctic, 174, I77, 400, 436, 444. 547, 550
Ant-eater, 109, 111, 235, 238, 471
Antedon, 138, 245
Antelope, 110, 235
Antennophorus, 707, 706
Anthracite, 437
Anthrax, 630; bacillus, 622, 588
Antibodies, 218, 630
Antirrhinum majus, 376
- molle, 376
Antiseptic surgery, 631, 632
Antitoxins, 630-631
Antitoxin treatment, 218
Ants, 697-707, 219, 566, 700, 701, 703; parasites of, 705-707, 706
Anus, evolution of, 405-406
Ape-man, 251
Apennines, 397
Apes, 111; behaviour of, 248, 149, 753-759; compared with man, 247-250; embryos of, 251; evolution of, 481-486, 471; habits of, 742, 859, 860; local races of, 859-860
Apherusa, 595
Aphrodite, 138
Apotettix, 352
Appalachian mountains, 397, 444
Appendicularia, 510
Appendix, 57-58, 56, 57
Aquatic life. See Sea, Fresh-water, Rivers, Lakes
Arabia, 241, 540
Arachnida, 126
Arachnocampa, 552
Aral Sea, 599
Archæopteryx, 201, 212, 395, 455, 211, 449
Archegosaurus, 442
Archeocyathus, 412
Archeozoic Era, 196, 197, 410, 198
Archipallium, 734, 766
Architeuthis, 564
Arctic, 177, 547; fox, 548; hare, 548; ocean, 400, 488
Arenicoia, 138, 408
Argentina, 490
Argus pheasant, 74I
Argyropelecus, 523
Aristocystis, 417
Aristotle, 5, 10, 521, 865
Arizona desert, fertility of, 582
Armadillo, 111, 236, 471; nine-banded, 238; Texas, 270
Arrow-worm, 409, 411, 595
Arsenic, sweets and beer contaminated with, 640
Arsinoitherium, 474, 471
Art, modern savage, 866; of early men, 866
Artemia, 553
Arteries, 26, 99, 35, 38
Arthrodires, 425
Arthropoda, 120 sqq.; behaviour of, 689-691; contrasted with vertebrates, 120; evolution of, 406-407, 412-416, 420; relationship with worms, 129, 407
Articulates, 435
Artiodactyla, IIo
Ascaris, I39; lumbricoides, I39
Asellus, 552, 554
Asepsis, 632
Aseptic surgery, 631, 632
Asexual reproduction. See Reproduction
Ash, 590
Asia, 470, 476, 543, 635; Minor, 206, 488
Aspidium, 163
Ass, 110, 203
Aster, 587
Asterias, 136
Asterina, 134, 135
Asteroxylon, 418, 429
Astrapotheres, 240, 471
Astronomy, early, 868
Astroscopus, 672
Atelura, 706
Atemeles, 706
Atlantic Ocean, 1L88, 5I9
Atolla, 520
Auk, Great, 377
Aulastomatomorpha, 521
Aurelia, 150, 151, 675
Aurignacian culture, 494
Australia, 109, 152, 136, 237, 239, 240, 241, 410, 444, 470, 472, 474, 475, 476, 541, 543, 550, 552, 598, 611, 743; how the marsupials colonized, 239; mammals of, 235; mouse plague in, 598
Australopithecus, 483
Autolytus cornutus,'4-5
Automatism and mediumship, 805-806
Autonomic nervous system. See Nervous system
Avebury, Lord (1834-1913), 71'
Axolotl, 322
BABIRUSSA, 471
Baboon, 256, 754, 235, 471
Bacillus botulinus, 640
- coli, 624.
- oertrycke, 640
Bacillus of bubonic plague, 596, 605; of cholera, 623, 624; of diphtheria, 623-624, 623; of tuberculosis, 624, 625; of typhoid fever, 624, 568, 625
Backbone, 24.
Bacteria, 33-34, 181-184, 568; and agriculture, 183, 184, 558; and circulation of elements in nature, 184, 580; and decay, 184; and disease, 183, 621-633; and fermentation, 183, 622-623; and phosphorescence, 184, 559; economic importance of, 183, 558, 183 in digestive organs, 54, 57-58, 505; in food, 640; nitrogen-fixing, 184, 558; number of, in air, 182, 647-648; resistance of body against, 59-60, 624, 630; sexless reproduction of, 181, 267-268, 271; sizes of, 568; spores of, 181, 267
Bacteriophage, 186, 396
Badger, 111
Baikal, Lake, 241, 539
Balance of nature, 607-609
Balanoglossus, 119, 216, 119, 526
Baldwin, Prof. Mark, 357
Balkans, the, 488
Balloons, heights reached by men in, 6, 7
Ball-urchin, 418
Baltic, 537, 591
Baluchithere, 471, 474
Baly, Prof., 395
Bandicoot, rabbit-eared, 237, 235
Banyan tree, 27', 546
Baobab, 89
Barnacle, I25-I26; larvæ of, 595
Barnard,J.E I86
Basal Eocene period, 472, 474
Basilarchia archippus, 573
Bastian, 5
Bat, 111, 117, 118, 471; gamete of, 273; vampire, 236
Batesian mimicry, 577
Bateson, Prof. William, 265, 290
Bathothauma, 518
Bathypterois, 518
Batrachiderpeton, 442
Beadlet, 151
Bean, Florida Velvet, 35I
Beans, selection in, 289
Bear, 111, 235, 471; polar, 549
Bearberry, 586
Beardmore Glacier, 445
Bear island, 437
Beaver, 108, 603, 746, 471
Bechuanaland, 483
Beech, 586, 590
Bees, 694, 709-719, 713; flight of, 717; queen, 565, 566; sense of colour in, 714, 715; Sense of smell in, 714, 717, 718
Beetles, 707, 706
Behaviour, 248; essentials of, in animals, 67; human, 84-87, 787-826; in plants, 678-680; instinctive and intelligent, 680-683; Of insects and other invertebrates, 689-719; of monkeys and apes, 753-759; Of the lower invertebrates, 672-686; of the lower vertebrates, 725-753; Of the Slipper animalcule, 683-686; rudiments of, 663-688
Behaviourism, 787-790
Behring Strait 206
Belemnite, 421, 420
Belgian Congo, 188
Belgium, 492, 586
Bell-animalcule, 567
Ben Lawers, 491
Bennettites, 462
Benthic zone, 512
Bergson, Prof. Henri, 262, 265, 266, 385, 670
Beri-beri, 637, 638
Biddulphia, 595
Biffen, Sir Rowland, 303
Big Tree, Californian, 564
Bile, 55
Bilharzia, 142
Biological duties, primary, 830-831
- economics, 578
Biology, beginnings of applied, 612-615; history of; 11-15
Biosphere, 502
Birch, 590
Birds, 109, 112-113, 564; and pollination, 464; brain of, 733; courtship of,
735 sqq.; education in, 747; evolution of, 420, 449, 455; flightless, 550; fore limbs of, 218; instinct in, 734-735; play in, 750 sqq.; social life of, 751, 752; song of; 748, 752; territorial instinct in, 604
Birth, 95
Birth-control, 262, 874, 875
Bivalves, 130
Black Death, the, 625, 628
- Sea, 488
Bladder-wrack, gamete of, 273
Blastostyle, 147, 147
'Bleeder's disease," 343; pedigree of, 343; in European royal families, 343
Blister-rust, 612
Blood, 16-18; cells of, 28; clotting of, 34-35; course of, 35-40, 37; evolution of, 405-409; functions of, 34; lobster, 122
Blood-pressure and nicotine, 64
Blood-test, the, 220
Blood-vessels, 26
Blubber, uses of, 5I4
Boar, wild, 471
Body-mind, 763-764
Body-soul-spirit, the theory of, 839-840
Bones, evolution of ear-bones, 213; human, 24; minute structure of, 32. See Skeleton
Boring animals, 529, 530
Borrelia berbera, 628
Bose, Sir Jagadis Chandra, 674; experiments with plants, 9
Botfly, 556
Bothriolepis, 423
Botulism, 640
Bow-fin, American, 445
Brachiopods, I43, 143
Brachydactylous hands, 298
Bradley, Dennis, 844
Brain, 26, 81, 98, 722-723; development of, 722-726; evolution of, 404-405; 719; grey matter of, 86; human, 84, 764-769, 765, 768; main parts of in vertebrates, 722-726; of amphibians, 728-730, 724; of extinct reptiles, 460; of invertebrates, 675-678; of reptiles, birds and mammals, 730-735. See Nervous system
Branchiocerianthus. 564, 565
Branchiosoma, 449
Brazil, 13', 573
Bread, 636; leavening of, 176
Breathing. See Respiration
Brecklands of East Anglia, 607
Breeding of plants and animals, applications of modern knowledge to, 303-304: superstitions about, 310-313
Breuer, Robert (1842-1925), 811
Bristle-worm, 412, 535, 408
British Columbia, 233
- Museum (Natural History), 570
Brittany, 491, 560
Brittle-star, 135, 214, 417, 136
Broken Hill skull, 41>3
Bronchitis, 654
Brontosaurus, 459, 460, 466; fabled African 188
Brontotherium, 381
Broom, purple, 279
Browne, Sir Thomas (1605-1682), 5
Bryophyllum calycinum, 156
Bryophyta, 164
Bryozoa, 408
Bubonic plague, 605; bacillus of, 596
Buccinum undatum, 132
Budding, 269
Buffalo, 236
Bullfinch, 748
Bulrush, 587
Burbank, Luther (I849-I926), 304, 376
Burchell's zebra, 235
Burma, 235
Bursaria, 566, 567
Bush turkey, 735
Bustard, great, 377
Butcher's broom, 112
Buttercup, 158, 159, 159
Butterfly, 576; African Swallowtail, 221, 576; Monarch, 573; Pierine, 370; Viceroy, 573; White Admiral, 573
CACTOBLASTUS, 611
Cactus, 541, 582
Caddis-fly, 46I
Caisson disease, 7
Cake-urchin, I35
Calamites, 436, 443
Calanus, 595
Calf, abnormally developed, 316: stomach of; 476
California, 200, 400, 610
Calluna vulgaris, 559, 560
Calocalanus plumulosis, 515
Calvin, John (1509-1564), 825
Cambrian period, 196, 412-415, 416, 419, 221, 447, 198, 420
Camel, 110, 244, 217, 244, 471
Cameroon rain-forest, 511
Camouflage in nature, 570
Camphor, 469
Camptosaurus, 449
Canada, 410, 412; Arctic, 549
Canary, 748
Canary Islands, 374
Cancer, 655-657, 657
Candour, 832-834
Canidae, 231, 232. See Dog
Canis aureus, 231
- lupus, 231, 232
Cannel coal, 437
Canti, Dr. R. G;., 30, 678
Cape Verde Archipelago, 242
Capillaries, 16, 36, 39; regulation of, 64
Carbohydrates, 48
Carbon, 48; circulation of, in nature, 184, 579
Carbon dioxide, 22,64; and plants, 154, 155; See also Respiration
Carboniferous period, 196, 415, 418, 436, 439, 448, 462, 490, 198, 420
Carebara, 701
Caribbean Sea, 516
Carniola, 551
Carnivora, 111, 231
Carnivores, aquatic, 471, 532
Carp, 89, 715
Carpel, 433
"Carriers" of` disease, 624
Cartilage, 3-
Caspian Sea, 530, 599
Castle, Prof. W. E., 369, 370, 371
Catfish, 539, 570
Catkins, 160
Cats, 111; classification of, 232; digestive organs of, 505; play in, 749-750
Cattle, 110; breeding of, 310-313; ecology and, 613-614; in Neolithic age, 11
Caucasus, 397, 491
Cave bear, 495
Cave hyena, 495
Cave-lion, 495
Cavemen. See Homo
Caves, animal life in, 551-552
Caytonia, 463
Cells, 28-33, 29, 32, 33, 43, 53, 59, 75, 76, 78, 89, 153, 269, 568; co-operations of; 403; germ (See Gametes); length of life of, 31; movements of, 19, 678-679; multiplication of, 31, 173, 282-283; number of in body, 32; of blood, 33; of plants, 155, 156; stages in aggregation of, 172, 173
Cenozoic era, 196, 197, 446, 461, 462, 465, 468, 469, 472, 476, 484, 198, 420, 471; climate during, 469-470
Centipede, 128-129
Central Africa, 444
- America, 162, 188, 206, 490, 629
- Asia as the region of man's origin, 484.
Central nervous system, 68
Centropages, 595
Centrosomes, 283
Cephalaspis, 423
Cephalopoda, 132, 42I-422, 523, 595
Ceratium, 403
Cercaria, I41, 142
Cerebellum, 87, 724, 733, 765
Cerebral cortex, 85, 73I-732, 764-769
- hemispheres, 73I, 85, 799
Cetacea, I1I, ldl, 471
Cetorhinus, 5"4-
Ceylon, 304, 544
Chaetoceras, 595
Chalicotheres, 473, 471
Chalk, biological origin of, 171
Challenger expedition (1872-1876), 187, 517
Challengeria, 514
Chameleon, 114, 570
Chamois, 550
Chaparral, 590
Charles II of Spain (1661-1700), 299
Charr, 375
Cheese-mite, 567
Chellean culture, 492, 493
Chemical sense of fishes, 727
Chemistry of living substance, 47, 578-579
Chemotherapy, 632
Chestnut, 590
Chiasmodus, 515
Chicken-pox, 630
Childhood, 98-102
Children of late marriages, 313
Chimaeras, grafts and, 278-280, 279
Chimpanzee, 236, 248, 249, 754-755, 756, 757, 821, 859, 479, 754, 757, 758; embryo of, 95, 251; hands of, 249
China, early man in, 252, 859
Chinese Primrose, mutations in the, 351
Chirocephalus,.553
Chiroleptes, 543
Chiroptera, 111, 471
Chitin, 379
Chlamydomonas, 173
Chlorodendron, 403
Chloroform, 613
Chlorophyll, 154, 379, 569, 578
Cholera, 625, 624
Chordata, II8
Chromosomes, 264, 282-310, 314, 363, 285, 301, 302, 303; and Sex, 337-349; function of, 284-188; in plants, 286; mapping the, 300-303
Chrysocyon, 231
- jubatus, 231
Chyme, 54
Cichlidæ, 539
Cider and poisoning, 64.0
Cilia, 42, 92, I17, I3I, I72, 67I
Ciliates, 17I, 402, 567
Cinnamon, 469
Circulation of the blood, 26, 37; evolution of, 405
- - elements in nature, 184, 579-581; of carbon, 578; of nitrogen, 184, 579; of phosphorus, 617
Cirrothauma, 515
Civet, 111
Clacton, 492
Clairvoyance, table-tapping, and telekinesis, 842-845
Clam, 526, 595
Classification of living things, 10-11, 105-106, 230
Clausthal, 552
Clavellina, 331, 332, 332
Cliff-swallow, 550
Climate, changes in, 396-400, 443-446, 469-470, 486-492
Climatius, 423
Cliona, 529
Cloaca, 95
Clothing and health, 649; evolution of, 650
Club-foot, cause of, 298
Club-moss, 165, 431, 435, 436, 437, 442, 420, 432
Clytia larva, 513
Coal, cannel, 437; Brown, 437; Carboniferous, 437; Devonian, 437; Eocene, 437; household, 437; Jurassic, 437; rate of use of, 437
Coal-measures, 436; life in, 441-444-
Cobitis barbatula, 536
Cobra, 114
Coccolithophoridæ, 510
Coccyx, 94
Cochineal insect, 611
Cocklebur, 587
Cockroach, 127, 565
Coconut moth, 610-611
- palm, 610
Coelenterates, 149, 404, 405, 415, 674, 149, 151, 511
Coelom, evolution of, 406
Coenolestes, 237
Coffee, 644.
Cold, common, 650; susceptibility to, 650
Cold storage, preservation of food in, 635
Collembola, 584, 595
Collozoum, 403
Colobopsis, '100
Coloration, concealing, 569; disruptive, 57I; warning, 57r
Colour and pattern in life, 568-577
- changes of, in animals, 570, 67I; in chameleon, 67I; in cuttlefish, I33; in frog, 67I; in octopus, 67I
- of desert animals, how evolved, 506
- of marine animals, 520
Columba livia, 129
Comb-jellies, 595
Comephorus, 539
"Comet starfish," 145
Comfrey, 230
Complex, in psychology, 808, 8Io
Conditioned reflex, 770-773; inhibition of, 775-780
Conduct, modern ideas of, 827-838
Condylarths, 4721 473, 471
Coney, 236, 235
Congenital idiocy, 8I5
- physical defects, 61r
Conger, 439
Congo, 535; rain-forest, 59I
Conifers, I62, 462, 590, 420, 432
Connective tissue, 32
Consciousness, 9, 760-761; passive or active, 76I; range of, 76r- 762
Constipation, 636; and tea-drinking, 644
Consumption, 657
Continents, maritime outlines of, 398
Convergence in evolution, 450
Convoluta roscoffensis, 560, 56I
Copepods, 5I6, 520, 583
Copra, 6Io
Copromonas, stages in sexual process of, 272
Coral, 151, 268, 527, 528, 559, 511; reefs and islands, life on, 528-529
Cordaites, 434, 442, 443, 444, 420
Cordiceps, 556
Coregonus, 375, 538
Corizus, 341
Cork-oak, 590
Cornwall, 4gI
Corpus luteum, 97, 98
Corpuscle, human red blood, 33, 33, 568; of frog, 568
Correlation. See Nervous system and Internal secretion
Cortex, at work, 779 sqq; expansion of, 764 sqq.
Corycella, 402
Coryphodon, 473, 471
Corystes, 526, 528
Corythosaurus, 458
Coscinodiscus, 595
Cotton-spinner, 136
Cottus gobio, 536
Cotylosaurs, 448, 449
Courtship in animals, 735-74-2; i" newts, 730
Cousins, marriage of, 306, 306
Cow, quantity of milk given by a, 614
Cowpox, 631
Cowper's glands, 91
Cow-wheat, 557
Coyote, 13I
Crab, 124, 42I, 515, 678; hermit, 124, 327, 522, 559, 124, 526; larvæ of, 595; nervous system of, 678
Crandon, Mrs. ("Margery"'), medium, 848, 849, 850, 851, 849, 850
Crataegus, 179
Creodonts, 473, 474, 471
Crested Dinosaur, 458
Cretaceous period, I96, 4rI, 4.22, 4-39, 448, 453, 4-54, 456, 457, 459, 462, 464, 465, 467, 469, 470, 471, 475, 517, 198, 420, 452, 458
Cretinism, 100
Crinoid, 420
Crocodile, 597, 449, 452, 533; West African, 564
Cro-Magnon type of man, 859
Crookes, Sir William, 845, 846
Crossbill, 60I
Crows, carrion, hooded, and hybrid, 234
Crozet Island, 550
Crustaceans, '14, 420, 515, 518, 523, 564
Cryptic colours, 569
Cryptodifflugia, 402
Cryptogams, I62
Ctenophores, 15I-I52, 5I1
Cuba, 304
Cuckoo, 574
Cucumaria, 136
Culex, 628
Cultivation of the soil, origin of, 867. See Agriculture
Curie, Madame, 255
Cuscus, 137
Cuttle-fish, 112, 132, 409, 419, 519, 133, 420; eye of the, 669; smoke-screen of the, 133-134, 521
Cuvier, Georges, Baron (1769-1832), 197, 1I6, 133, 473
Cyanus, 564
Cycadeoids, 410
Cycads, 433, 445, 420
Cyclops, 124, 139, 150
Cyclostomes, 116, 422, 424
Cyclothone microdon, 514
Cynogathus, 213
Cypress tree, 469
Cystosoma, 511, 523
Cytisus adami, 279, 279
- laburnum, 179
- purpureus, 279, 279
Cytoplasm, 29
DALEMPATIUS, his diagram of human sperm, 324
Dalmatia, 590
Danais plexippus, 573
Daphnia, 351
Darwin, Charles, 202, 240, 242, 263, 307, 364, 365, 374, 381, 393, 464, 500, 608
Darwinism, meaning of, 263; vindication of, 366
Davey, S. J., 845
Dawn-Man, 251
"Dead man's fingers," 151
Dead Sea, 553
Deaf-mutism, 305; how inherited 306
Death, causes of, 88-89; life after, 852-853; nature of, 88
Death rates, in animals, 364, 597-606; in man, 653-654, 655
Death Valley, 541
Decay, as a living process, 579
- biological importance of, 184
Dedifferentiation, 332
Deep sea, life in the, 7, 8, 517-529
Deer, 110, 471; red, 137, 606
Deer-mouse, American, 5
- Florida, 374
Deilemera, 574, 575
Dementia præcox, 817
Dendrobates tinctorius, 671
Dendrocystis, 417
Dendrosoma, 403
Denmark, 233
Descartes, René (1596-1650), 763
Desert, belts, 590; colour animals of, 506; life in, 540-544; nature of the early world, 426
Desmids, 173, 402
Development of embryo, 93-96, 314, 325; abnormal, 316
- - life communities, 584-58
Development, normal and monstrous, 314-316, 315, 316, 321: of life-communities, 584-589; of the individual, 314-336
Devonian old red sandstone, 4
- period, 196, 415, 424, 436, 198, 420
"Devonshire colic," 640
Diabetes, cause of, 634
Diaphragm, 27, 41
Diathesis, 622
Diatoms, 173, 510, 5I3, 539, 548, 554, 402, 515
Dicynodont, 448
Diet. See Food
Digestion, 47-58; in amoeba, 168; in lobster, 122; organs of, slackness of, 636, 637; with aid of bacteria, 504
Digestive system, 47-58, absent in tapeworm, cancer of, 656, 657; evolution of, 405, 406; in flatworms, 140; in herbivores and carnivores, 505; in lobster, 112
Dimorphodon, 456
Dinichthys, 415, 423
Dinictis, 384
Dinoceras, 471
Dinoflagellates, 5I0, 514
Dinosaurs, 114, 148, 457-461, 468, 472, 449, 458, 460, 466
Diphtheria, 623, 624, 630, 623
Diplocaulus, 449
Diplodocus, 460, 449, 564
Dipodomys spectabilis, 543
Dipper, 368, 359
Diprotodon, 241 241
Dischidia, 546
"Discovery" expedition, 547
Disease-carriers, human, 624; insects, 625-630; rats, 628
Disease, epidemic, 653; infectious and contagious, 621-633; nature of, 621 the fight against, 658-660
Disinhibition, 779
Distomum macrostomum, 572
Distortions, 356, 356, 357
Distribution of animals, as evidence for evolution, 136-246
- of human races, 238-239, 863-864
Dixippus morosus, 784
Dochmius, 140
Dog, 111, 228-229, 229, 230, 237, 241, 564, 565; brain of, 772; different species of, 231-232; hypnotism in, 783; intelligence of, 744; mind of, 773-775; senses of, 780; temperament in, 785-786
Dogfish, 106-107, 116, 254, 726, 107, 223
Dogger Bank, 527, 551
Dogwood, 586
Doliolum, 144
Dolphin, 111, 474, 514, 217, 471
Dominance in heredity, 194
Dorsal lip, in embryo, 317
Dove, 506
Doyle, Sir Arthur Conan, 844
Draco, 454
Dragon fly, 128, 670
Dragonet, 736
Dreams, prophetic, 840-842; psychology of, 809-812
Drepanaspis, 423
Driver ants, 706
Drosophila, 285, 291, 300, 301, 347, 351, 371, 301, 303, 351, 396
Drugs, and the mind, 824-826; their uses and dangers, 642-645
Dry land, as a habitat for life, 502-503, 539-540; invasion of by animals, 437-442; invasion of by plants, 426-434
Dryopithecus, 252, 483
Duckbill, 109, 235, 449
Duckbilled Dinosaur, 467, 449, 458
Duckling, an abnormally developed, 316
Duckweed, 534
Ductless glands. See Internal secretion
Dugong, 108, 471
Dungeness, 194
Dunne, J. W., 840
Dust, and hay fever, 647; and health, 646; defences against, 42
Dwarf-plankton, 539, 595
Dysentery, and amoeba, 567; and ciliates, 172
Dytiscus beetle, 538
EAGLE, 89, 747
Ear, evolution of, 113; working of, 76-78, 82. See Hearing
Early Cambrian period, 419
- Cenozoic period, 490, 743
- Devonian period, 439
- Eocene period, 483
Earthworm, 137, 583, 584, 686
Earwig, 610
East Africa, 233
- Indies, 547
Echidna, 213, 235
Echinoderms, 134-137, 136, 420; behaviour of, 676-682; classes of, 135-136; evolution of, 416-418, 417, 420
Echinosphæra, 417
Echinus, 136
Ecology, 14, 578-606; economics and, 578
Ectoplasm, 845-851, 846, 849
Edentates, 111, 471
Edrioaster, 417, 417
Education, in animals, 747-749; in man, 773-774
Eel, 536, 537; electric, 424, 672, 762
Eel-grass, 538
Egg, evolution of the, 446; human, 93; of grass-frog, 566. See Ovum
Egret, 750
Egypt, 5, 493, 540, 54I, 598, 599, 610
Ehrlich, Paul, 633
Élan vital, the, 263, 265, 384-385
Eland, 235
Elaphis, 567
Elbe, 534, 535, 554
Electric eel, 424, 671, 762
- ray, 672
Elephant, 136, 475, 471; African, 566, 56Q; evolution of the, 211-212
Elephas. See Elephant
Elginia, 448
Elm, 587
Elodea, 338
Embryo, evidence of evolution from the, 222-227; formation of, 93-94, 314; human, 93-96, 247, 249-250, 254, 94, 95, 96, 103, 107, 245, 251: of chick, 722, 107, 722; of chimpanzee, 95, 251; of dogfish, 1o6-1o8, 107; of gibbon, 251; of gorilla, 95, 251; of lancelet, 7ro; of lizard, 107, 223; of newt, 223; of rabbit, 107, 223; organizers in, 316-317; symmetry of, 314
Embryonic membranes, 96, 475
Emotion and urge, 793-794
Empedocles, 163
Emperor penguin, 547
Empid, 736
Encephalitis lethargica, 625, 631
Endocrine cells, 102
Endocrines. See Internal secretion
England, 487, 488, 491
English Channel, 488, 49'
Entelodon, 474, 471
Environment, 6-8; heredity and, 187, 288, 299, 353, 823; response to, 71-72, 663. See Habitat
Enzymes, in digestion, 50
Eoanthropus, 25', 492
Eobasileus, 473
Eocene period, 196, 469, 470, 472, 473, 474, 743, 198, 108, 471
Eohippus, 207, 209, 203, 204, 208
Eoliths, 492
Epidemic diseases, 653
Epidermis, 59
Epididymis, 91, 91
Epihippus, 207, 208
Epiphytes, 546
Epithelium, pavement, 19
Equus. See Horse
Ergosterol, 639, 645, 651
Ermine, 548
Eryoneicus, 518
Eryops, 449
Eskimo, 549, 635, 742
Essequibo, the, 535
Eugenics, 874-875, 879
Euglena, 172, 173, 568
Eunotosaurus, 213
Eupagurus bernhardi, 559
Euphorbias, 541
Euphrasia, 557
Eurycorpha, 574
Eurypterids, 415, 564
Eustachian tube, 95, 77
Evadne, 595
Evaporation, 581
Evasion, indolence, and fear, 837-838
Evening Primrose, 352, 353, 375, 463
Everest expedition of 1924, 6, 7
Evolution, 191-258 (evidence for)
- 261-387 (mechanism of)
- 391-495 (Story of)
- and geographical isolation, 373-375
- by Natural Selection, 163, 364-373
- chief theories of, 261-265
- continuity of, 210-211, 352-353
- convergent, 450-451
- cosmic, 257, 391-393
- crossing and, 375-377
- Darwinian theory of, 263, 364-373
- diagrams of, showing history of main groups, 411, 426, 449, 471
- evidence from anatomy, 216-222
- evidence from geographical distribution, 236-244
- evidence from the variability of living things, 228-236
- evidence from useless structures, 220-222
- evidence of the embryo, 222-227
- evidence of the rocks, 194-215
- evidence summarized, 244-246
- in action, 289
- Lamarckian theory of, 262-263, 353-360
- mystical theories of, 265, 380-387
- of adaptations, 505-507
- orthogenetic, 264-265, 380
- parallel, 211, 450, 515
- progress in, 477-480
- purpose in, 385-387
- random nature of, 386-387
- slowness of, 210-211, 371
- spurts in, 352-353
- straight line, 264, 380, 384
Evolution, tangled nature of, 475-477. See also the names of the various groups
Ewart, Cossor, 310
Exaltation, psychology of, 804-805
Excretion, 22, 43-47; organs of, 45
Excretory system, 45
Exercise. See Physical exercise
Exophthalmic goitre, 101
Extinction of species, 377
Extroversion, 823
Eye, 666, 867, 668, 669; defects of in man, 79-80; development of, in embryo, 723; evolution of, 665-670, 767; in deep-sea animals, 522-513, 523; inheritance of colour in man, 298; of cuttle-fish, 669, 669; of fishes, 727; of insects, 670; of scallop, 131; third, in primitive vertebrates, 715; working of, 79-80 See Sight
FABRE Jean Henri (1823-1915), 696, 736
Faeces, 57-58
Falkland Islands, 550
Faroe Islands, 551
Fasciola, 142
- hepatica, I40
Fats, 48; storage of in body, 53
Faults, geological, 100
Feathers, 112, 212; evolution of, 455
Feather-star, 136, 224, 225
Femur, 25, 106
Fermentation, yeasts and, 176
Fern-plant, 167, 164
Ferns, 161-166, 434, 435, 436, 163, 164, 432; evolution of, 420; reproduction of, 163-164; sperm, 164
Ferreriro, the, 730
Fertilization, of the egg, 93, 285, 314, 285; by artificial means, 275; cross and self-fertilization, 160; dispensed with, 274-275; in plants, 158-160, 166 - of the soil, 174, 614, 6I5, 6I6
Fetishism, 809
Fiddler-crab, 736, 329
Field ant, 703
Field-mouse, 601; gamete of, 273
Fig, 469
Figwort, 222
Fiji, 610, 611, 871
Filamentous bacteria, 182
Filaria medinensis, 139
Filter-passing organisms, 185-186, 396, 568
Fire-salamander, 572
Fish, 106-108, 115-116, 564; anatomy of, contrasted with man, 106, 107; bony and gristly, 116; colour changes in deep sea, 570-576, 518, 521; earliest, 422-425; electric shocks given by, 672; evolution of, 420; eyes of, 727; flat, 296; fresh-water, 535-537; mind of, 726-718; senses of smell and taste in, 725, 726; swimming bladder of (See Gas-bladder)
Flagellates, 171, 173, 271, 510, 173, 402, 403, 515, 568, 595
Flamingo, 571
Flatworms, 140-142, 140, 406; gamete of, 273; regenerating, 273
Flea, 561, 563, 596, 219, 566, 567
Flicker, 233, 376
Flight, evolution of, 453-457; in archæopteryx, 112; in birds, 112, 454, 455; in insects, 127, 454; in pterodactyls, 455
Florida, 436
Flounder, 536
Flour, value of white, 636, 639
Flournoy, Professor, 805
Flowers, 158, 564; and bees, 715-719; evolution of, 433, 462, 432; inheritance of colour in, 292; insects and, 159, 46I-465; T. H. Huxley on, 118; variation in, 230; wind-pollinated, 160
Flukes, 140, 572, 141
Fly as disseminator of bacteria, the, 640
Flying-fish, 116
Flying-fox, 471
Flying-reptiles, 455-456, 449
Fogs, cause of, 646
Food, amount needed by man, 48, 634; and cancer, 656; artificial, 635; chemistry of, 47 sqq., 49; choice of, 634-639; excess of, 634; of different animals, 503-507, 505; of plants, 154; poisoning by, 639-642; preservation of, 635; uses of, in body, 21-23, 46-47, 634. See Digestion and Vitamins
Food-chains and parasite-chains, 593-597
Foraminifera, 171, 169, 402, 595
Fore-arm, structural plan of, 216-217, 217
Fore-brain, 722, 723, 722, 729
Forel, 695
Fore-limbs, structural plan of, 217, 218
Forest, tropical, 544-547
Formica fusca, 704
- pratensis, 703
- rufa, 707
- rufibarbis, 703
- sanguinea, 704
Fossil record, coherence of, 202; diagram of, 420; gaps in, 197-201; sample sections of, 202-212. See Evolution and Geological time
Fossils, age of, 101-102, 255-258; evidence of, for evolution, 194-215; formation of, 200-201
Four o'clock, 292, 294, 296, 293, 306; Mendelian explanation of breeding behaviour of, 293
Fox, Arctic, 229, 601; common, 231, 743; cross, 230; Fennec, 231; red, 230, 601; silver, 230
France, 200, 469, 494
Frederick III (1415-93), Emperor, 299
Freshwater, life in, 531-534, 531, 533
Freud, Prof. Sigmund 794, 811, 812, 813, 814, 828, 836
Frog, 115, 538, 719-730, 217, 565; brain of the, 724; evolution of, 331, 449; gamete of, 273; hand of, 249; segmenting eggs of, 326; tadpoles of, 115, 321, 323
Fruit-fly. See Drosophila
Fulgoridæ, 575
Funchal, 510
Functional differentiation, 319
Fungus, 157, 556, 558, 579; parasitic and beneficial, 559-560
Fur. See Hair
Fur seals, extermination of, 617
GALAPAGOS ISLANDS, 242, 374, 597
Galilee, 493
Gall-bladder, 55
Gall, Franz Joseph, 765; and controlling stations of the faculties, 766
Galton, Sir Francis (1822-1911), 825
Galveston, 233
Gametes, 99, 271-275; female, 91; how formed, 283-284; male, 91, 93; of various animals, 273
Gammarids, 24I
Gammarus, 552
- chevreuxi, 324, 325
Ganges, River, 625
Garnett wheat, 615
Gas gangrene, 613
Gas-bladder of fish, 8, 514, 516, 671
Gastric juice, 53
Gastropods, 131, 419, 521
Gastrostomus, 518
Gavial, 113
Gecko, 114
Gemmule, formation of a, 270
General paralysis of the insane
Genes, 290-304, 323-326, 337-349, 325; dominant and recessive, 294, 297; in man, 297-300, 343; multiple, 293-300
Genetics, 266, 287-313
Genus, 105, 230-236
Geographical distribution, and evolution, 236-244
- isolation, and origin of species, 373-377
Geological time, diagrams of, 392, 420; how determined, 255-257; magnitude of, 255-258; main divisions of, 196-199. See Fossil record and Rocks
Geotropism, 680
Gerbil, 605, 608
Germ-cells. See Gametes
Germ-plasm, 280-281; and soma, 355
Giant pig, 471
- Rush, 443
Giants, 101
Gibbon, embryo of, 251
Gigantactis, 521
Gigantura, 523
Gill-clefts, 107, 224; of embryo, 95; of fishes, 95
Ginkgo, 225, 420
Gipsy-moth, 348, 610
Giraffe, 110, 236, 235, 471, 564
Glaciers, 486
Gland-grafting, 330
Glands, Cowper's, 91; ductless, 100, 102, 67; of common toad, 67';parathyroid, 102; pineal, 108; pituitary, 97, 102, 108, 724; post-pituitary, IoI, 102, 101; pre-pituitary, 100; salivary, 770, 77', 772; thyroid, 97, Ioo, 102, 108, 587
Glass-sponge, 524
Glaucus, 5I6, 515
Globigerina ooze, 171, 580
Glossina palpalis, 629
Glossopteris, 44-5
Glyptodont, 240, 383, 4-53, 237, 471
Gnat pupæ and larvæ, 534
Gneiss, 200
Gnu, white-tailed, 235
Goat, 110
Gobi Desert, 540
Goitre, exophthalmic, 101
Golden-rod, 586, 587
Goldfinch, 752
Goldtail moth, 682
Goliath beetle, 565
- frog, 565
Gondwanaland, 444
Goose-barnacles, 530
Gooseberry, 612
Gorgonia, 151
Gorilla, 236, 483, 859, 250, 251; embryo of, 95, 251; resemblance between man
and, 248; skeleton of, 250
Graafian follicles, 92
Grafting, trees, 276, 276; yellow laburnum and purple broom, 479
Grafts in plants and animals, 278-180
Graptolite, 405, 415r 410
Grass, 613, 6I4, 6I6
Grass-frog, 565, 566
Grasshopper, colour-patterns in wild, 352
Grasslands, 590
Grass-snake, European, 737
Gratiola, 222
Grayling, 536
Greasy fritillary, 605
Great ant-eater, 138
Great Dismal Swamp, Florida, 4-36
- Lakes, 587
- Salt Lake, 553, 592
Grebe, 747
Greenfinch, gamete of, 273
Greenfly, 275
Greenland, 236, 410, 469, 487, 548, 591, 601
Grey matter in brain, 86
Gribble, 529
Grimaldi type of man, 859
Gristle, 24-, 32
Groos, Karl, 75I
Ground-sloth, 473, 237, 471
Grouse, red, 374
Growth, and ductless glands, 100-101, 327; discriminating, 679; exaggerated local, 319, 329; human, 98-99, 327, 328; in Crustacea, 330; limitation and control of, 326-330; of the individual, 314-336
Guano, 581, 616, 617
Guiana, 546
Guinardia, 595
Guinea-pig, 136
Guinea-worm, 139, 555
Gulf Stream, 488, 510, 549
Gull, 747
Gwyniad, 375
Gymnosperms, 162
Gynanders, 343-344
Gypsum, 444
HABITAT, 499-507, 553; adaptation to, 505-507; aerial, 503; fresh-water, 531-539; land, 539-540; marine, 508-530; parasitic, 503; terrestrial, 501, 539-551
Habsburg lip, 298, 299
Haeckel, Ernst Heinrich (1834-1919), 224, 263, 298, 578
Hæmocyanin, 137
Hæmoglobin, 43, 396
Hæmophilia, 343; pedigree of, 343; in European royal families, 343
Hag-fish, 116, 557
Hair, 61, 71, 109; length of, and temperature, 358, 358
Haire, Norman, 102
Haldane, J. B. S., 303, 369, 395, 457, 6I2, 640
Haliclystus, 150, 527, 151
Halictus, 709
Hamburg, 554
Hands, 565; brachydactylous, 298; comparison of, 249
Hardy, A. C., 59', 594
Hare-lip, 254
Harpacticids, 595
Hartebeest, 133
Hartsoeker's diagram of human sperm, 324
Hartz Mountains, 552
Haviland, Miss, description of an Amazonian forest by, 544
Hawaii, 550, 6'I
Hawk-moth, 464, 119
Hawthorn, 279
Hay fever, 647
Health, 621, 658-660, 830; clothing and, 649-650; food and, 634-642; fresh air and, 646-651; of animals and savage races, 621; sunlight and, 65I-652
Hearing, 76; in dogs, 780. See Ear
Heart, 16, 37, 38, 41; disease of, 653; regulation of, 65, 775-776; survival of, 31
Heart-urchin, 418, 526
Heather, Mediterranean, 491; Scotch, 559
Hedgehog, 111, 471
Heidelberg man. See Homo
Helium, 255, 256
Hen, 564, 565
Henderson, L. J., 394
Heredity, and sex, 337-379; in man, 297-300; mechanism of, 282-286; Mendel's laws of, 290-297, 308-310; non-Mendelian, 308; superstitions about, 310-312
Hermit-crab, 522, 559, 695, 124
Herodotus, 597
Heron, 750
Herring, 439, 565; food-relations of the, 595
Hesperornis, 212, 449
Heterangium, 435
Heterocarpus, 521
Heterocephalus, 358, 358
Heteronotus, 574
Hexactinellid sponge, 524
Himalayas, 397, 484; animal and plant life in the, 549
Hind-brain, 722, 723, 122, 724
Hingston, Major, 7
Hipparion group of horses, 209, 208
Hippidium, 209, 208
Hippopotamus, 110, 474, 471, 533
Hoatzin, 212
Hogben, Professor, 570
Holland, 536; and land reclamation, 589
Holmes, Oliver Wendell (I809-I894), 631
Holm-oak, 590
Holoptychius, 423
Homarus vulgaris, 121
Hominidæ, 48I
Homo, 105
- heidelbergensis, 152, 485, 492; jaw of, 252
- neanderthalensis, 105, 252, 485, 493, 494, 859
- rhodesiensis, 2511 585
- sapiens, 105. See Man
Homology, 107
Homunculus, 314, 324
Honey-bee, 711-714:
Honey-locust, 587
Honeypot ant, 701, 703, 706
Hooke, Robert (I635-I703), I3, 18; microscope used by, 13; observations on cork, 28
Hook-worm, 555
Hopkins, F. Gowland, 638
Hoplophoneus, 384
Hornea, 430, 429
Horsemint, 586
Horses, 110, 471, 564; calculating, 748; evolution of, 202-210, 281, 475-476, 203, 204, 205, 208
Horseshoe crab. See King crab
Horsetail, 435, 432; evolution of, 420
House-fly, 119, 566
House-martin, 753
House-sparrow, 237
Howard, Eliot, 738
Huanaco, 138
Hudson Bay Company, 600, 601
Hudson, W. H., 752
Human body. See names of parts
- association, the present phase of, 866-880
- behaviourism, 787-790
- interaction, development of, 864-865
- sacrifice, 867
Humble-bee, 710
Humboldt's woolly monkey, 138
Humming-bird, 565, 566
Humour. biological function of, 821
Hunter, John (I718-I793), 178, 320
Huxley, Thomas Henry (I815-I895), 2I8, 248, 263, 443, 863
Hyæna, 108, 584
Hyænodon, 471
Hybrids, between species, 233, 234; graft-hybrids, 278, 279; intersexuality in, 348; sterility of, 233; vigour of, 304
Hydra, 150, 151, 178, 277, 551, 558, 406, 566
Hydrophilus grub, 532
Hydrotropism, 680
Hydrous larva, 532
Hydrozoa, 149
Hygiene. See Health
Hyperieds, 595
Hypnotism, in dogs, 783; in lower animals, 783-784; in man, 794 798
Hypohippus, 383, 208
Hyracotherium, 204
Hyrax, Cape, 235
Hysteria, in dogs, 785; in man, 801-804
IANTHINA, 520
Ibex, 550
Ice Ages, 410, 444, 469, 470, 473, 476, 484, 486, 487, 488, 491, 492, 493, 528, 392, 445; time diagram of, 487
Ice-flower, 548
Iceland, 488
- moss, 177
Ichneumon-fly, 500, 556
Ichthyosaur, 114, 194, 201, 451, 474, 217, 449, 452
Iguana, 114:
Iguanodon, loo, 449
Immunity from disease, natural and artificial, 630-63'
Inbreeding, effect of, 306; its dangers and uses, 304-307
Incest, origin of tabus against, 860-863
India, 206, 244, 444, 625, 630
Indiana, 587
Indian Ocean, 522
Indigestion and tea-drinking, 644
Individuality, in cells, 31; in the lower animals, 144, 148-149, 150; in plants, 157
Indo-China, French, 374
Infection, the process of, 623-624
Inflammation, 34, 60
Influenza, 623, 625, 631, 648, 653, 655
Infusoria, 172, 673
Inheritance of acquired characters, 353-360. See Heredity
Inhibition, in the nervous system, 775-780; and hypnotism, 783; and sleep, 780-783
Inoculation, preventive, 218
Inostransevia, 449
Insanity, 814-821
Insectivora, III, 471
Insects, 126-128; as disease carriers, 615-630; as pests, 610-611; behaviour of, 689-719; determination of sex in, 338; earliest known, 416; effect of island life on, 550-551; evolution of flowers and, 461; faces, 219; flight of, 454; flightless, 550; fossil, 200, 416, 420; parasitic 556; pollination of flowers by, 158-160; rivalry between land vertebrates and, 464; societies 697-701
Insemination, artificial, 341
Insomnia and tea-drinking, 644
Instinct, culminates in Arthropods, 689; defined, 682; in amphibians, 729-730; in birds, 734-735; internal secretions and, 97, 345
Insulin, 102
Intelligence in birds, 734-735; in fish, 728; in mammals, 735-747
- tests, 821-823, 822
Internal secretion, 35, 66, 97, 100; and growth, 100, 101, 321-323; and sex characters, 99, 344-346. See Adrenal, Pituitary, Thyroid
Intersexes, 346-349
Interstitial cells, 92, 99
Intestinal worms, 138-139, 142
Intestine, 57, 58; large, 571 small, 54
Intra-specific selection, 373
Introversion, in psychology, 813
Iodine, 174, 322
Ireland, 174, 487, 491
Irritability of protoplasm, 664
Irvine, A. C., 6
Islands, life on, 242-243, 374-375, 550-551
Isolated organs, survival of, 31-32, 664
Isolation, as a species-maker, 373-375
Israelites and manna, 177
Italy, 233, 488, 494, 626, 874
JACKAL, Indian, 231
Jaguar, 384
Jamaica, 619
James Island, 374
James, William (1842-1910), 793, 823
Japan, 174, 524, 574
Java, 188, 252, 304, 464
Jaws, evolution of, 214, 422, 252
Jeans, Sir J. H., 9, 391, 397
Jelly-fish, 147, 148, 150, 412, 520, 562, 667, 674, 675, 687, 151, 280, 515, 564, 594
Jenner, Edward (1749-1823), 631
Jerboa, III, 543
Johannsen's experiment, 289
Junco 601
Jung, Dr. C. G., 794, 812, 813, 814, 823, 825, 828, 829, 865
Jurassic period, 196, 197, 421, 448, 451, 452, 453, 454, 455, 456, 457, 459, 461, 462, 468, 470, 490, 593, 198, 211, 420
KALA-AZAR, 172
Kalahari Desert, 541
Kamchatka, 470
Kangaroo, 110, 237, 235
Kangaroo-rat, 543
Kea, 609-610
Kelp, 404
Kent's Hole, 492
Kenya, 614
Kerguelen Islands, 550, 551
Kiang, 203
Kidneys, 27, 44, 45, 46
King crab, 126, 416, 412, 420
Kittens, play in, 749-750
Kiwi, 550
Koala, 235
Koehler, Wolfgang, 821
Komodo dragon, 564
Koumiss, 89
Kraepelin, Prof., 554
Krait, 114
Krakatoa, 584
Kudu, 471; greater, 235
LABURNUM, 279, 279
Lacerta viridis, 114
Lake Baikal, 539
- Mendota, Wisconsin, U.S.A., 594
- Michigan, 586
Lakes, life in, 537; Salt, 553
Lamarck, Jean Baptiste (1744-1829), 262, 353, 354
Lamarckism, 263, 264, 354-360
Lamb, an abnormally developed, 316
Lamellibranchia, 131
Laminaria, 174, 403, 525
Lammergeier vulture, 550
Lamprey, 116, 118, 557
Lamp-shells, 143, 408, 143, 420; larva of, 513
Lancelet, 117, 666, 720, 722, 119
Land, dry, as a habitat, 502-503, 539-552; invasion of, by animals, 437-442; invasion by plants, 426-434; originally lifeless, 426
Land reclamation, 589
Langouste, 515
Lankester, Sir E. Ray, 674, 680
Lanugo, 96
Larch, 564
Larvæ, in surface zone of sea, 513; of insects, 128, 535, 703-704, 712; of sea-squirts, 118; of worms, 513
Lasiognathus, 521
Lasius, 706
Late Cretaceous period, 483
- Devonian period, 425
- Eocene period, 483
- Miocene period, 483
- Permian period, 470
- Silurian period, 421, 438
Lateral line, the, 716, 107
Laternarla lucifera, 575
Laughter, 810
Lawes, 616
Layering of plants, 276
Lead, 155, 256
Leaf-insect, 693
Lebistes, 566
Leech, 137
Leeuvenhoek, Anthony van (1632-1723), 167; microscope made by, 12
Lemming, 548, 599, 604
Lemonade and poisoning, 640
Lemon-juice as a cure for scurvy, 637
Lemur, 111, 471, 479
Leopard, 236
Lepadocrinus, 417
Lepidodendron, 442, 443
Lepidonotus, 138
Lepismina, 705
Leptodora, 539
Leptomonas, 596
Leucocytes, 59, 60
Levick, Dr. G. Murray, 752, 753
Levitation, 841-845, 842, 843
Liana, 545
Lice, 628
Lichen, 176-178, 558, 587, 178
Liebig, Justus von, Baron (1803-1873), 612, 616
Life, after death, 852-853; before fossils, 401-409; conquers the dry land, 426-446; distinctive features of, 4-6; earliest, 401; evolution of, diagram, 411; in fresh water and on land, 531-554; in the sea, 7, 508-530; length of, 89; limitation in space of, 6-7; meaning of, 3-6; of flowing waters, 534-537; of standing waters, 537-540; On floor of the sea, 523-524, 524; on other planets, 8; on seashore, 524-527, 526; on surface of the sea, 512-516; Origin of, 394-396; oxidation and, 23; subjective side of, 9-10, 760-763; the ascent of, 411; under control, 607-617, 878-880; vegetable, 154-166
Life-communities, 581-606; growth and development of, 584-589; grading of, 589-593; parallelism and variety of, 581-584
Life Force, 384-385
Ligaments, 24, 33
Light, and plant growth, 154-157, 680; fascination of, for insects, 681; its influence on amceba, 665; on earth worm, 666; on lancelet, 666; its penetration into water, 520. See Animal light, Ultra-violet light
Ligia, 416
Lignin, 428
Lignite, 436
Limax amoeba, 168
Limbs, evolution of segmental, 408; movements of, 26
Limestone, 200; biological origin of, 171
Limicolæ, 368
Limnodrilus, 535
Limnoria, 529
Limpet, 667; lava of, 513
Limulus, 416
Ling, common, 559
Lingula, 143
Linnæus, Carl von (1707-1778), 130, 261
Lion, 136, 471
Lister, Lord (1827-1912), 613, 632
Lithographic stone, 2II
Litopterna, 211, 240, 483, 237, 471
"Little Joss" wheat, 304
Littoral zone, 512
Liver, 42, 56, 644, 27; and the manufacture of anti-toxins, 630; of lobster, 122
Liver-cell, human, 567, 568
Liver-fluke, 140, 146, 555, 141
Lizard, 564; flying, 454; green, 114
Lizard Point, 491
Lizards, evolution of, 449
Llama, 110, 256, 244
Loach, 536
Lobster, 120-123, 145, 121, 564
Lobster-moth caterpillar, 576
Lobworm, 137
Lockjaw,623
Locust, 219; plagues, 598, 599; tree, 590
Lodge, Sir Oliver, 845, 851
Loeb, Jacques, 275, 613, 680, 68I
Lomechusa, 707
London, 469, 625, 626
- clay, 195, 469
- Pride, 491
Lophius, 521, 515
Louisiana, 750
Louisville, 487
Lower Cambrian period, 418
- Carboniferous period, 441
- Devonian period, 416, 424, 436, 429
- Eocene period, 483
- Oligocene period, 483
Loxomma, 449
Lucretius, 263
Lugworm, 137, 138, 408
Luidia, 135, 565
Lumbriculus, 275, 535
Luminosity in the deep sea, 521-522, 521
Lung-fish, 244, 425, 438, 440, 729
Lungs, 26, 27; heart and, 653-655
Lupin, 558
Lyginopteris, 435, 214
Lymantria, 348
- dispar, 610
Lymph, 39
Lymphatic system, 40
Lynx, 601
MACAQUE, 755
Machærodus, 384
Macrauchenia, 237, 471
Macro-feeders, 504
Madagascar, 231, 273, 444
Madeira, 520, 550
Madreporite, 134
Maeterlinck, Maurice, 709
Magdalenian culture, 494-495
Magnolia, 469
Magnus, Olaus, 599
Magpie, 753
Maidenhair-tree, 225, 420
Malaria, 600, 612, 613, 625, 626, 630, 633, 653; parasite of, 568, 626, 627
Malaya, 188, 243, 244, 304, 444, 544, 557
Mallory, G. L., 6
Malta, 551
- fever, bacterium of, 588
Malthus, Thomas Robert (1766-1834), 261
Mammals, 109; brain in, 733, 767; classification of, 109; courtship in, 741-742; education in, 747-748; evolution of, 470-475, 420, 449, 471; evolution of intelligence in, 733-734, 742-747; extinct South American, 237; length of the Age of, 257; of Australia, 110, 235; periodicity of northern, 669; placental, 110, 471; play in, 749; pouched, 109; smallest, 111; typical African, 235
Mammoth, 200, 487, 495
- cave, Kentucky, 551
Man, anatomy and physiology of, 14-102; biological peculiarities of, 857-865, 876; brain of, 764-769; embryo of, 93-96, 94, 223, 251; evolution of, 247-258, 481-495, 471, 479; fossil (See Homo Eoanthropus, Pithecanthropus, Sinanthropus), hand of, 249; heredity in, 298-300, 343; physical health of, 621-622, 653, 657-658; place in nature, 247-250; place in time, 255-258; place of origin, 484; races of, 863-864; rate of increase of, 873-876; tail in, 28, 94; vestigial organs in, 253
Manatee, 111
Mangabey, 755
Mangroves, 529
Mania, 816-817
Manic-depressive insanity, 816
Manna-lichen, 177
Maple, 469, 590
Maquis scrub, 590
Marble, 200
Marmoset, 238; brain of, 767
Marquis wheat, 6I5
Marriage, 860-862; of cousins, 306
Mars, life on, 8
Marsh fever, 625
Marsupials, 109, 110, 472, 449; colonization in Australia, 239
Mastodon, 383
Mastodonsaurus, 442, 449
Materialization, 841-851, 846, 847, 848
Maternal impressions, 311
Matthew, Dr. W. D., 471
Mauritius, 550
Maximilian I (1459-1519), 299
Meals, 639, 640
Measles, 625, 630, 653
Mediterranean, 152, 489, 519, 520, 551
Mediumship, automatism and, 805-806
Mediums, in spiritualism, 805, 842-851
Medlar, 279
Medusa, 147, 148, 147
Megatherium, 241, 237
Melampyrum, 557
Melancholia, 817
Melanesia, 348
Melanogaster, 303
Melilot, white, 587
Melosira, 595
Membracidæ, 574
Mendel, Abbé, Johann Gregor (1822-1884), 14, 264, 266, 290-291
Mendel's laws, 160, 190, 291-297, 308-310
Merychippus, 208, 209, 224, 203, 204
Mesmerism, 851
Mesohippus, 208, 203, 104
Mesolithic Age, 494
Mesopotamia, 489
Mesozoic era, 196, 197, 421, 426, 445, 446, 452, 457, 458, 461, 465, 468, 469, 471, 476, 593, 198, 392
Mespilus, 279
Messor, 703
Metamorphic rocks, 100
Metchnikov, Ilya (1845-1916), 89
Metopina, 705-706
Metridium, 151
Metriorhynchus, 454
Mexico, 541
Micraster, 210, 211
Microbe-carriers, insects as, 625-630
Microbes, 167, 170, 181; and disease, 622-625; avoiding and killing, 631-633; carried in the air, 647-648; harmless, 623; in crowded and open places, 647-648. See Bacteria
Microbrachis, 442
Micrococcus, 568
Micro-feeders, 504
Microscope of A. van Leeuvenhoek, 12; of Robert Hooke, 13; development of, 13
Microscopists, early, 324
Mid-brain, 722, 722, 724, 729
Middle Cambrian period, 412
- Carboniferous period, 416
- Devonian period, 425, 426, 428, 434, 436, 440
- Eocene period, 474
- Jurassic period, 462
- Ordovician period, 424
- Pliocene period, 483
- Stone Age, 494
Migration, of birds, 490, 601-602; of butterflies, 604; of caribou, 490; of fox sparrow, 490; of lemmings, 599; of locusts, 599; of mammals, 238-240, 490, 491, 744-745; of Salmon, 536
Milk, 109, 6I4; and cancer, 640; and internal secretion, 97; contamination of, 640; longevity and soured, 89; model farms for preparation of Grade A, 641; why it turns sour, 183
Milkwort, 230
Miller, Hugh (1802-1856), 415
Miller's thumb, 536
Millipede, 128-129
Mimeciton, 706
Mimicry, 573-577, 576; Batesian, 577; Müllerian, 577
Mimosa pudica, 157
Mind, collective, 877; drugs and the, 814-826; human, 787-826; in gear and out of gear, 814-821; in insects, 689-695; individual variation in man, 821-826; of a dog, 773, 774, 776-777, 778, 779, 780-786; of amphibia, 728-730; of a fish, 715-728; of reptiles, birds and mammals, 730-735. See Behaviour, Consciousness
Minnow, 536
Miocene Age, 196, 469, 470, 472, 474, 483, 486, 857, 198, 208, 471
Miohippus, 209
Mirabeau, Count Honoré Gabriel Riquetti (1449-1791), 825
Mirabilis jalapa, 292, 294, 196, 29:
Miracidium, 141, 141
Missing links in evolution, 211-215
Mississippi, the, 194
Mites, 126
Mitosis, 283
Moa, 550
Mocking-bird, 374, 748
Modern Era, 468-480
Moeritherium, 471
Mola, 514
Mole, 111, 471
Molluscoidea, 143
Molluscs, 130-132, 521, 564; evolution of, 418-422; nervous system of, 678
Monarch butterfly, 573
Mongolia, 106, 460, 472, 473, 475
Mongolian Desert, 203
Mongoose, 608
Monitor, 114.
Monkey, Humboldt's Woolly, 238
Monkey-puzzle tree, 469
Monkeys, 108; behaviour of, 753-759. See Apes
Monotremes, 109, 449
<'monstrosities due to abnormal development' 316>
Moods, self-knowledge and, 831-832
Moropus, 471
Mosasaur, 114, 451, 449, 452
Mosquito, 600, 611, 219, 626; malaria-carrying, 626, 628, 629
Moss sperm, 164
Mosses, 162-166, 587, 156, 164, 165, 432
Moth, cinnabar, 578; gold-tail, 681; Poplar Hawk, 219; Vapourer, 221
Moths, and light, 680; melanism in, 361; smell in, 694
Moulds, 579, 175
Mountain-chough, 550
Mountains, life on, 6, 549
Mount Everest, animal and plant life on, 549
Mouse, 110, 598, 21, 565; gamete of, 273, 294
Mousterian culture, 493
Mouth, digestion in, 51; evolution of, 404
Mud-hopper, 440, 440
Mulatto, 199
Müllerian mimicry, 577
Multiple genes, 299, 369 sqq.
Multiple personalities, 798-801
Multituberculates, 470, 449
Murray, Prof. Gilbert, 840
Muscles, 24-26, 70, 664, 670; of the forearm, 17; of a frog, 70
Mushrooms, 173, 175, 403
Musk ox, 236, 548, 358
Mutation, 290, 350-352; in Chinese Primrose, 351; in Drosophila, 351, 302, 303, 351; in Evening Primrose, 352; in moths, 361; induced by X-rays, 360-361; steadiness of, 352
Mycetozoa, 178
Myers, Frederic William Henry (1843-1901), 844
Mynah, 748
Myriapoda, 128
Myrmecocystis, 702
Myrmica, 706
Mysis, 595
Myxoedema, 100
Myxomycetes, 178. See Slime Fungi
NAGANA disease, 556
Naias, 538
Nanno-plankton, 510
Naosaurus, 449
Natural selection, 263, 364-367; as a conservative force, 367-369; in action, 369; may be useless to species, 371-373; acting on man, 874; unchanging conditions, 369-37
Nauplius larva, 513
Nautilus, 421, 422, 514, 420
Navicula, 595
Neanderthal man. See Homo
Nectar, 158
Nemathelminthes, 138
Nematophycus, 429
Nemertine worms, 142, 513
Neo-Lamarckism, 262, 265
Neolithic Age, 11, 494
Neo-Malthusianism, 262
Neopallium, 734
Neo-salvarsan, 633
Nereis, 138, 408; larva of, 513
Nerve fibres, 68, 69, 68, 69
Nerves, 26, 68; function of, 68-776; impulses in, 664; structure of, 68-70
Nervous impulses, 69
Nervous system, 26, 68-71, 84-87; 405, 721; central, 68; development of, in embryo, 720-726; evolution of, 404, 672-678; in lower animals, 720-726; in vertebrates, 720-735 See Brain, Nerves
Nest of ants, 700; of termites, 709
Neurasthenia, in dogs, 786; man, 806-807
Nevada, mouse plague in, 598
New England, 488, 612
- Guinea, 109, 236, 544
- Hebrides, 348
New Stone Age, 494
- York, 488, 629
- Zealand, 231, 237, 238, 243, 550, 551, 552, 606, 609, 610, 614
Newt, 115, 315, 729-730, 315; evolution of, 449; poison of, 671
Nicotine, 642
Night-blindness, 343
Nightjar, European, 740
Nightjar, South American, 569, 570
Nile valley, 489, 540
Nipa palm, 469
Nitre, 616
Nitrogen, cycle, 184, 579-581; fixation, 184, 558; in blood, 35; in proteins, 48
Nitzschia, 595
Noctiluca, 512, 514, 520, 515, 595
Nordenskiold glacier, 547
North Africa, 106
- America, 106, 231, 237, 239, 244, 444, 470, 476
- Sea, 527, 551, 225
North-western India, 195
Norton, Lt.-Col., 6, 7
Norway, 410, 488, 601
Notochord, 95, 118
Nourishment of the body, 47, 634-645
Nova Scotia, 490
Nummulite, 565
Nyctilus, 569-570
Nyctiphanes, 595
OAK, 155, 586, 590
Obelia, 146-149, 150, 157, 415, 147, 405
Ocean, depth of the, 8; life in. See Sea
Occupational mortality, 654, 655
Octopus, 132, 409, 419, 421, 596, 669, 420, 515
Oecophylla, 700
Oeda, 574
Oenothera lamarckiana, 352, 353
Oikomonas, 568
Oikopleura, 595
Okapi, 236
Old age. See senility
Old Stone Age, 11, 257, 493, 494
Oligocene period, 196, 469, 472, 474, 483, 198, 208, 471
Oliver, Prof. F.W.. 589
Onager, 203
Onychophora, 129
Ooze, abyssal, life on, 523-524; globigerina, 171; radiolarian, 171
Ophiothrix, 136
Oporabia autumnata, 369
Opossum, 110, 229, 236, 237, 238
Optoquine, 633
Orang-outang, 481, 753, 756, 248; late embryo of, 251
Orchids, 464, 546
Ordovician period, 196, 197, 414, 415, 419, 198, 420
Oregon, 990
Organisms, sizes of, 564-568
Organizers, in embryo, 317
Origin of species, 263. See evolution
--life, 394-396
Ornitholestis, 449, 458
Orohippus, 207, 204
Orophocrinus, 417
Orthogenesis, 264, 265, 380
Oryx, 235
Osborn, Prof. Henry Fairfield, 264
Osteolepis, 440, 423
Ostracoderms, 422, 424, 425, 420, 423
Ostrich, 564
- Dinosaur, 467, 458
Otter, 111
Ovary, 91, 92, 97, 100, 92; in plants, 160
Oviduct, 92, 93, 92
Ovum, 87, 90, 91, 93, 97, 273, 90, 567
Owl, Snowy, 490, 548
Ox, 110, 471
Oxford clay, 195
Oxidation and life, 13
Ox-pecker, 610
Oxygen, 22, 63; amount needed, 63; and plants, 154, 15; as a poison, 182; transport of, in body, 34, 43; urgency of need for, 36-37. See Respiration
Oxysoma, 707, 706
Oysters, 130, 131; as typhoid carriers, 640
PACHYCONDYLA, 705
Pachystomias, 518
Paddie-bird, 597
Paddle-worm, 137
Pain, 74
Palaeomastodon, 471
Palæotherium, 209
Paleozoic era, 196, 197, 412-413, 415, 417, 419, 421, 427, 198, 392
- fish, 423
- vertebrates, 423
Palestine, 177, 494
Palinurus, 515
Pallas' sandgrouse, 602
Panama, Isthmus of, 241
Pancreas and diabetes, 102; and digestion, 54-55
Pangenesis, Darwin's theory of, 355
Pansy, wild, 378
Panthera tigris longipilis, 232
-- -- sondaica, 232
Papaver nudicaule, 373
-- striatocarpum, 373
Papilio cynorta, 576
-- dardanus, 221, 576
Paraguay, 231
Parahippus, 209
Parallelism and variety of life-communities, 581-584
Paramecium, 172, 567
-- bursaria, 665, 666
-- caudatum, 665, 683-686, 683
Parasite-chains, 593-597
Parasites, 172, 226, 503, 578, 579, 125, 402
Parasitism, discussion of, 503, 555-562
Paratettix, 351
Parathyroid glands, 102
Paratyphoid, 228
Pareiasaurus, 448
Parrot, 89
Parthenogenesis, 274
Partnership and parasitism, 555-562
Passerella ilica (fox-sparrow), migration of, 490
"Passive immunlty" from disease, 631
Pasteur, Louis (1822-1895), 5, 176, 167, 613, 623, 630, 632; experiment by, 268
Patagonia, 490
Patella, 106
Pattern in life, colour and, 568-577
Pavement epithelium, 29
Pavlov, Prof. Ivan Petrovitch, 728, 770-773, 774, 778, 779, 780, 781, 782, 784, 785, 789, 810, 811
Peacock, 735
Peat, 437
Peccary,
Pedicellariæ, I35
Pelagic zone, 512
Pelagomya, 516
Pelagothuria, 513, 5I6, 515
Pelican, 113
Pellagra, 638
Pelvis, 106
Pelycosaur, 448, 449
Penguin, 514, 597
- Adelie, 752, 753, 752
Pennaria, 148
Pepsis, 573
Peridinians, 539, 598
Peridinium, 595
Periophthalmus, 440, 529, 440
Peripatus, 119, 137, 216, 667, 128
Perissodactyla, 110
Peristalsis, 52
Permian period, 196, 415, 439, 444, 446, 447, 448, 461, 462, 468, 198, 420, 445
Persia, 206, 540, 599
Peru, 616
Pests and their biological control, 609-612
Petrel, 547
Phaeocystis, 595
Phagocytes, 59, 60, 630
Phalanger, vulpine, 237, 235
Phalarope, 368, 359
Phanerogams, 162
Phenacodus, 471
Philip IV of Spain (1605-1665): 299
Philippine Islands, snails of the, 374
Pholas, 529
Phoronis larva, 513
Phosphates and muscular activity, 645
Phosphorescence. See Animal light
Phosphorus, importance of supply, 617
Phototropism, 680
Phthisis, 654, 655
Phyllirrhoe, 511
Phylum, classes of the vertebrate, 109; meaning of, 106
Physalia, 150
Piddock, 529
Pierine butterflies, 378
Pig, 110, 474, 217, 471
Pigeon, 734-, 739; Wild rock, 229
Pike, 536
Pilidium larva, 513
Piltdown man. See Eoanthropus
Pineal gland, 108, 715, 725, 765; of frog, 724
Pine-tree, 590; spores of, 432
Pipe-fish, 527, 151
Pithecanthropus, 251, 251, 486
Pituitary gland, 90, 97, 98, 101, 102, 108, 322, 570, 99, 724, 765
Placenta, 96, 98, 96
Placental mammals, 110; archaic, 449; evolution of the, 471; modern, 449
Plague, 628, 629, 653
Plague bacillus, 568
Plaice, 527
Planaria, 140, 145, 332, 140, 405
Planema epoea, 576
Planktomya, 514
Plankton, 124-225, 520-526; in lakes, 538; in polar seas, 548; in rivers, 534
Plankton-recorder, 591
Plant-animals, 172-174.
Plant-body, the building of the, 401-404
Plant-bug, sex determination in the, 337
Plant-carbohydrates, 579
Plant-cells, 155, 156
Plant-lice, 583
Plant-proteins, 579
Plants, 154-166; and water, 582; aquatic, 509, 510, 511; behaviour of, 679; breeding of, 303-304; cells of, 155; classes of higher, 162; cycad-like, 420; developnent of, 461-465; distinction from animals, 154, 173, 182; earliest known land, 429; evolution of true flowering, 420, 432; fertilization of, 166; flowering, 162; food of, 156; growth of, 679; importance to animals, 578; individuality in, 157-158; invisibly small, 9; light and, 154-157, 582; nutrition of, I54-157, 503; of the ancient world, 434-436; organisation of, 155; pollination of (see Flowers); regeneration in, 156; reproduction in, 155-166; single-celled, 173; Sir J. C. Bose's experiments with, 9, 679; stomata of, 155; sunlight and, 156; variations in, 362-363
Planulæ, 148
Plasmodium falciparum, 627
- malariae, 627
- vivax, 627
Plato, 865
Platurus, 452
Platyhelminthes, 140
Platypus, 213, 216, 221, 237, 235
Play, biological function of, 749-753; in Man, 876
Pleistocene period, 196, 197, 198, 468, 470, 486, 492, 551, 602, 198, 208, 471
- and recent climate, 486-492
- ice-sheet, work of, 540
Plesiadapis, 474
Plesiosaur, 114, 452, 449, 452
Plesippus, 208, 204
Pleurobrachia, 151, 151
Pliocene period, 196, 469, 486, 492, 743, 857, 198, 208, 392, 471
Pliohippus, 207, 208, 104, 208
Plover, 693
- golden, 490
- ringed, 569, 571
Plumose anemone, 151, 151
Plymouth Aquarium, 570
Pneumococcus, 654
Pneumonia, 648, 654, 655
Podon, 595
Poisons, in food, some possible, 639-642
Poisons, produced by amphibians 67I
Polacanthus, 449, 458
Polar regions, 547
Pollan, 375
Pollen, 160; and bees, 717-718; evolution of, 430-433; See Flowers
Pollination, 158-160; by animals, birds, and insects, 463-465
Polyergus, 703
Polygalum, 230
Polyploidy, 363
Polyps, 149, 147, 151, 405, 406, 513, 564, 565
Polyzoa, 143, 554
Pompilius quinquenotatus, 697
Pond-life at the surface-film, 535, 534
Poplar, 271, 443, 469
Population, 873-874
Porcupine, 111
Porpoise, 111, 112
Porthesia chrysorrhoea, 682
Portugal, 491, 629
Portuguese man-of-war, 150, 520
Portunion, 226
Potamogeton, 538
Poultry, determination of sex in, 342; heredity in, 295, 297, 341-342
Prawn, 421, 527, 680, 518, 521, 524; larvæ of, 595
Praying mantis, 387, 736
Pregnancy, 96-97, 98; extra-uterine, 92; influence of shock on, 312
Preservation of food, 635
Pressure at great depths, 51I9
Pribiloff Islands, 617
Prickly-pear, 237, 598, 611
Primary era, 197
Primates, 111, 111, 471. See Man, Apes, and Monkeys
Primitive streak, in embryo, 94
Primula, 352, 375
- sinensis, 351, 363
Prince, Morton, 798, 799, 800
Proboscidea, 110, 471
Procerodes, gamete of, 273
Progeria, 330
Projection in psychology, 819
Pronuba, 692
Propagation, artificial, 275-277
Propliopithecus, 383
Prorocentrum, 595
Prostate gland, 91, 91
Protection, by bluff, 576
Proteins, 48, 186; in animals different species, 218-220
Proterozoic era, 196, 197, 410, 412, 198, 392
Proteus, 222, 551, 552
- amoeba, 168
Prothallus, 162
Protocentrum, 595
Protoceras, 471
Protocrinus, 417
Protohippus, 109
Protonema, 164
Protoplasm, 28; irritability of, 664, 665; nerve-like condition in, 672-673; origin of, 395
Protozoa, 170, 271, 401, 269, 272, 515, 565, 568; multiplication of, 170; sexual process 171
Przevalsky's horse, 203
Pseudocalanus, 595
Psycho-analysis, 811-814
Psychology, and conduct, 827-838; comparative (See Behaviour, Mind); human, 787-826
Ptarmigan, Spitsbergen, 490
Pteranodon, 456, 456, 564
Pteraspis, 423
Pterichthys, 423
Pteridophyta, 163
Pteridosperm, 214, 435, 444, 420
Pterodactyl, 451, 468, 218, 456
Pterolepis, 423
Pteropods, 419, 548
Pterosaurs, 457, 456
Pterygoteuthis, 521
Ptomaine poisoning, 640
Puberty, 99
Puerperal fever, 632
Pulse, in man, 38
Pure lines, in genetics, 287-300
Puss-moth caterpillar, 576
Pycnogonids, 549, 524
Pylorus, 54
Pyramids of Egypt, composition of, 171
Pyrenees, 397, 491
Pyrosoma, 119
Pyrosomes, 514
Pyrotheres, 140, 471
Pyrotherium, 237
Python, 114
QUAGGA, 103, 377
Quartzite, 200
Quaternary era, 197
Queen ant, 701
Queen bee, 711, 718-719, 565, 566
Queensland, 611
Quinine, 633
RABBITS, 110, 237, 588, 600, 606, 607; brain of, 733; digestive organs of, 505
Races, distribution of human, 239; do they grow senile? 382; mixture of, 376, 871; of mankind, 863-864
Radio-active elements as geolological clocks, 255
Radiolaria, 171, 178, 402, 403, 595
Radiolarian ooze, 171
Radium, 255
Radula, 4I8
Rafflesia, 463, 557, 564
Ragweed, 587
Rag-worm, 138
Rana. See Frog
Rat, 110, 605, 628, 630, 744; black, 364, 377, 370; brown, 364-365, 377; hooded, 370, 371, 370; and plague, 605
Rat-flea, 596, 628
Rationalisation, in psychology, 795
Rattlesnake, 114
Raven, 748, 750
Ray, 116
Rayleigh, Lord (1842-1919), 256
Recapitulation, in man, 94-95; theory of, 222-227
Recent period in geology, 196, 197
Recessiveness, in heredity, 194
Record of the rocks. See Fossil record and Evolution
Rectum, 92
Red deer, 551, 217
- Fife wheat, 615
- Sea, 553; origin of name of the, 167, 174
Red spider, 611
Redi, 267
Redshank, 359
Redwing, 752
Reed, Walter, 629
Reflex, 84, 85, 86, 772, 776
- conditioned, 770-773; contrast of, with inborn, 771; inhibition of, 775-780
Regan, Dr. Tate, 236
Regeneration of lost parts, 145, 276, 145, 156
Reindeer, 494, 548
- moss, 177, 591
Rejuvenation, 89, 330; is it desirable? 335-336
Religion and biological discovery, 12; and theory of Evolution, 191, 265; in man, 866-870
Remora, 530
Repression and the complex, 807- 811
Reproduction, 91, 144, 268-281; in plants, 158-166, 271, 426-434, 461-465; of our species, 873-876; rapidity of, 170, 364; sexless (asexual), 268; artificial, 175; in amoeba, 170; in animals, 144, 145; in bacteria, 181; in plants, 158; the most primitive method, 268; sexual, 90; a complication of reproduction, 271; absent in bacteria, 181; evasions and replacements of, 274-275; in fungi, 174; in Protozoa, 171; mechanism of, 282-286; reason for, 362-363. See also Fertilization of the egg
Reproductive system, 90-93
Reptiles, 113-114, 452, 564; beginning of the Age of, 446, 447-450; brain in, 730-735; evolution of, 447-461, 420, 449; flying, 456; length of the Age of, 257
Resin, 201
Respiration, 40; of plants, 154; organs of, 40; reason for, 22; regulation of, 63
Respiratory system, 40-43; diseases of, 654; of fish, 108; of insects, 465
Response, forms of, 670-672
Retina, 79, 79
Retrogression, 330
Reversion to ancestral type, 307-308
Reward wheat, 6I5
Rhabdopleura, 119
Rhamphorhynchus, 456
Rheumatic fever, 653
Rhinanthus, 557
Rhine, 488; species of fish in the, 536
Rhinoceros, 110, 236, 526, 610, 471, 597; Malayan, 744; Merck's, 487; woolly, 495
Rhizocrinus, 225
Rhizopoda, I71
Rhizosolenia, 595
Rhodesia, 493
Rhodesian fever, 629
- man. See Homo
Rhynia, 436, 420, 429
Rhyniella, 416
Ribbon-weeds, 525
Ribs, 106; action of, 41
Rice-grass, 589
Richet, Prof. Charles, 617, 841, 842
Rickets, 638, 639
Rivers, early vertebrate evolution in, 425; life in, 534; pollution of, 537
Rockies, 397
Rock-lobster, larva of, 515
Rocks, age of, 255-258; diagram of the record of the, 198; evidence of, for evolution, 19-215; formation of sedimentary, 1I94. See Fossil record
Rodents, 110, 474, 471
Rodriguez, 550
Rook, 752
Roscoff (Brittany), 560
Ross, Alexander, 5
Ross, Sir Ronald, 600
Rotang palm, 545
Rothamsted Experimental Station, 500
Rotifers, 142, 554, 563; evolution of, 407
Roughage, in food, 636
Roundworms, 138-140
Roux, Wilhelm (1850-1924), 319
Ruby wheat, 615
Ruff, 738, 740
Ruminants, 471; stomach of, 476
Ruptive coloration, 571
Ruscus, 212
Russia, 599
Rust (of Wheat), 557
Ruwenzori, 591
SABELLA, 138
Sabre-tooth, 471
Sabre-toothed cats, 384
Sacculina, 126, 226, 555, 557, 125
Sagitta, 409
Sahara, 236, 470, 489, 540
St. Francis of Assisi, 804
- Helena, 142, 243
- Hilaire, Geoffroy, 262
- Kilda, 374
- Louis, 487
Salamander, 115, 440, 737; evolution of, 449
Saliva, 51
Salmo, 375
Salmon, 439; migration, 536
Salps, 514
Salts, mineral, and fresh-water animals, 168, 532; as food of plants, 154; in blood, 34, 531; in diet, 47; in lakes, 553; in sea, 394
Salvarsan, 633
Sand dollar, 135, 418
Sand-eel, 595
Sand-grouse, 543
Sand-hopper, 241
Sand-rat, 358, 358
Sandstone, 199
Sandworm, 408, 513
Saprophytes, 173
Sargasso Sea, 502, 516
Sargassum bacciferum, 516
Sassafras, 469
Saturnia pavo, 691
Sauropods, 459, 460, 449
Saxifrage, 464
Scale-worm, 138
Scales, in fishes, 424; in reptiles, 113
Scallop, 131
Scapula, 106
Scardafella inca, 506
Scheuchzer, Professor, 197
Schizophrenia, 817
Schopenhauer, Arthur (1788-1860), 162
Science, dawn of modern, 11
Scorpion, 126, 420
Scotland, 233, 487, 488, 49I
Scottish Highlands, 195, 199
Scrophularia, 222
Scrophulariaceae, 376, 557
Scurvy, early treatment of, 637
Scymnognathus, skull of, 213
Scyphozoa, 150
Sea, as original home of life, 394-396; deep, 517-524; life in, 8, 508-512; shore life, 524-527; surface life of, 512-527, 513; temperature of, 399-400, 519
Sea-anemones, 151, 522, 559, 125, 511, 577
Sea-cow, 474
Sea-cucumber, 136, 412, 418, 516, 524, 420, 515; larva of, 513; pelagic, 515
Sea-dahlia, 151, 151
Sea-elephant, 741
Sea-fan, 511
Sea-gherkin, 136, 136
Sea-gooseberry, 151, 151
Sea-lettuce, 174
Sea-lily, 136, 412, 417, 445, 524, 136, 115, 420
Sea-lion, 741, 471
Sea-mouse, 137, 138
Sea of Galilee, 538
Sea-pens, 514, 511
Sea-pudding, 136
Sea-scorpion, 415-416, 422, 425, 420, 564
Sea-serpents, 188-189
Sea-shore life, 524-526
Sea-slug, 419, 515
Sea-snail, 595
Sea-snake, 452
Sea-spider, 549
Sea-squirts, 129, 144, 224, 331, 119, 332, 524
Sea-urchin, 135, 21O-211, 417, 670, 687, 136, 321, 420; behaviour of, 677; gamete of, 273; segmentation of eggs of, 321
Seaweeds, 172-174, 271, 428, 429; gamete of, 430, 273
Sea-woodlice, 524
Sea-worms, 137, 137, 138
Secondary Era, 197, 465
Secretin, 102
Sedge-warbler, 748
Seed, 161; distribution of, 161, 161:; evolution of, 432
Seed-ferns, 215, 435, 437, 443, 214, 420; evolution of, 420
Seeds, 158-162
Segmentation of the body, in animals, 123, 137, 407
- egg, 93, 321
Segmented worms, 137, 145, 406
Selaginella, 431, 432
Selection, and change of race, 370; by man, 228-230, 287-290; in evolution (See Natural selection); sexual, 373, 738
Self-fertilization in plants, 160
Selous, Edmund, 738
Sematic colours, 569
Seminal vesicle, 91
Semi-vertebrates, I17, 119
Semmelweis (1818-1865), 632
Senility, 88, 99, 330; of evolving races, 382; precocious, 330
Senility and races, 382; precocious, 330
Sensation, 71-75, 664; internal, 74; of position and movement, 81-82
Sense-organs, 7I-84; evolution of, 664-670; irritability as common basis of, 664; limitations of, 690
Sepia, 133
Sequoia gigantea, 89
Sertularia, 151
Sex, and marriage in primitive man, 859-863; conduct in relation to, 834-837; control of, 338-339; determination of, 337-349, 338; evolutionary significance of, 362-363; importance in psychology, 812; intermediates, 347-349; normal causation of, 337-338; reversal of, 346. See Reproduction
Sexes, proportion of the, 338-340, 340
Sex-hormones, 344-346
Sexless reproduction. See Reproduction
Sex-linked inheritance, 341-343, 342
Sex-mosaics, 343; butterflies produced by shock, 344
Sexual aberrations in fowls, 346
Sexual fetishism, 809
- selection, 373
Sexuality, evasions and replacements of, 274-275
Seymouria, 449
Shark, 116; basking, 116, 5I4
Shaw, George Bernard, 261, 263, 266, 384, 385
Sheep, 110, 140, 609, 610, 141, 564; an abnormally developed, 316
Shell-shock, 806
Shetland Islands, 374
"Shine-by-Night," 512
Shipworm, 529
Shock on pregnancy, influence of, 312
Short-sightedness, cause of, 298
Shrew, flying, 565; jumping; (brain of), 767
Shrew-mouse, 111
Shrimp, 124, 527
Siberia, 200, 233, 241, 539, 549, 590, 602
Sicily, 488, 494, 537
Sight, 78; in bees, 7I4; in dogs, 780; in fishes, 727. See also Eye
Silurian period, 197, 415, 416, 418, 424, 425, 429, 198, 420
Simocephalus, 408
Simpson, Sir James Young (1811-1870), 613
Sinai, 540
Sinanthropus, 251, 252, 485; skull of sub-man, 252, 859
Singer, Dr. Charles, 629
Single-celled life, 167-174, 176, 401, 402
Siphonophore, 150, 407, 415, 514, 520
Sirenians, 471
Sivatherium, 471
Sizes, of organisms, 562-568, 564, 565, 566, 567, 568; of ultra-microscopic particles, 396
Skate, 116
Skeleton, development of, 319; human, 24-28, 25, 26, 27; of dog, 106; of gorilla, 250; of lobster, 121; of vertebrates, 108, 424, 220, 221; strength of, 566
Skin, 59-62, 649; and temperature regulation, 61-62, 649; of amphibians, 115, 671; of coloured races, 299-300, 354, 357; of fishes, 424; Sunburn of, 357, 65I
Skink, 114
Skua, 547, 548, 594
Skull, Broken Hill, 493
Skunk, 637
Sleep, nature of, 780-783
Sleeping-sickness, 172, 556, 609, 612, 625, 568
Sleepysickness, 625
Slime-fungi (slime-moulds), 173, 178-180, 271, 179, 180
Slipper animalcule, 683, 683, 684; behaviour of, 683-686
Sloth, 111, 236, 383, 237, 238
Slow-worm, 114
Sludge-worms, 535
Slug, 131
Smallest living things, 185-186
Smallpox, 623, 625, 630-631, 653
Smell, 75; in bees, 715; in dogs, 780; in fishes, 727; in moths, 694; in primitive mammals, 766
Smelt, 536
Smilodon, 383, 384
Smith, Hélène, mediurn, 805
- Prof. Elliot, 766
- William (1769-1839), 195, 199
Snails, 130, 131, 671, 565, 566
Snakes, ancestral stock of, 449; extinct, 564
Snapdragon, 376
Snipe, 609, 739
Snow-leopard, 550
Solar disturbances and terrestrial life, relation between, 602
Solar plexus, 68
Soldanella, 548
Solenhofen, 201, 212
Solomon Islands, 870
Solomon's seal, 586;
Solutrean culture, 494
Soma, 281; germ-plasm and, 355
Somerville, Dr., 6, 7
Song-thrush, 565
Soot, and health, 646; amount deposited in modern towns, 646; defences against, 42
Soredia, 177
South Africa, 599
- America, 206, 209, 212, 234, 236, 237, 240, 241, 244, 444, 470, 472, 475, 476, 490, 534, 541, 544, 574, 599, 629; characteristic animals of, 238, 243
- American ungulates, primitive stock of, 471
- Georgia, 549
Spain, 488, 491, 494, 629
Spallanzani, Abbé, 613
Spanish Bayonet, 464, 692
- moss, 546
Sparrow, English, 364, 367, 610
- migration of the fox, 490
Spartina townsendii, 589
Species, chemical basis of, 219; meaning of, 105, 230-236; origin of. See evolution
Speech, 792, 857; fundamental processes of, 773-774; parts of brain concerned in, 769
Sperm, human, 587, 568
Spermatophytes, 162
Spermatozoa, 90, 91, 92, 272, 340; of ferns and mosses, 163
Sperms. See Spermatozoa
Sperm-whale, 519, 471
Sphærium, 535
Sphenodon, 114
Sphenophyll, 443
Sphex, 696
Sphoerulia bombi, 140
Spider, 126, 566, 695, 420
Spider-crab, 524, 562, 511, 564; gamete of, 273; instinct of, 692
Spinal cord, 26, 108, 721, 24, 721
Spiracle, 107
Spirochætes, 182
Spirogyra, 174, 402, 403
Spirula, 514
Spisula, 527
Spitsbergen, 437, 442, 469, 489, 490, 510, 547, 548, 549, 584, 591, 595
Spleen, 65
Sponge, reproduction of, 270
Sponges, 152-153, 153, 270, 447
Spongilla, 270
Spontaneous generation, 5, 267, 268
Spores, 271; evolution of, in plants, 428-434; of bacteria, 181; of ferns and mosses, 162, 163, 164; of fungi, 180
Sporogonium, 164
Sporozoa, 172, 626, 402
Spring-tails, 584
Spurge, 541
Squat-lobster, gamete of, 273
Squid, 409, 421, 596, 695, 518, 521, 564
Squilla, 527
Squirrel, 110, 229, 505, 596, 753, 471
Stag, 381
Stamen, 159, 433, 159
Starfish, 134, 145, 477, 667, 135, 136, 145, 420, 524, 565; behaviour of, 676
Starling, 237, 609, 748, 752
Stefansson, Vilhjalmur, 549
Stegocephalians, 441, 446, 442, 449
Stegosaurus, 461, 449, 460
Steinach, Eugen, 89, 102, 334, 335, 345
Steno, Nicholas (1638-1686), 13
Stensio, Dr., 424
Stentor, 665, 666, 667, 669, 665
Sterilization against bacteria, 18I, 632, 635
- of the unfit, 875
Sternum, 106
Stick-insect, 693, 784, 565
Stickleback, 536, 736
Stigma, 159
Stigmatization, 804-805
Still-births, 339
Stomach, human, 52, 26, 27; of calf, 476
Stomata of plant, 155
Stomolophus, 515
Stone curlew, 752
Straits of Gibraltar, 488, 519
Strangeways, Dr., 30
Strata, building of geological, 194-199; formation of, 194. See Fossils and Rocks
Stratton, Professor, 751
Strawberry, 17I
Streptococcus pyogenes, 624
Strongylus, 140
StructuraI pIans as evidence for evolution, 216-220
Struthiomimus, 458, 458
Sturgeon, 536, 539
Stylonychia, 268, 269, 402
Sublimation in psychology, 810
Succinea putris, 572
Sucker-fish, 530
Sugar, 304, 635
Sugar-cane weevil, 611
Sugar-maple, 586
Sumatra, 557
Sun animalcules, 402
Sun-fish, 514
Sunflower, 587
Sunlight, and plants, 156; as a tonic, 651-652; fresh air and, 646-652. See Ultra-violet light
Surgery, antiseptic and aseptic, 631, 632, 633
Survival of the personality after death, 852-853, 877
Swallow, 752
Swallowing, 51
Swallow-tail butterfly, 576
Swamp-cypresses in Florida, 436
Sweat, 62
Sweden, 256
Sweets contaminated with arsenic, 640
Swimming bladder of fish. See Gas-bladder
Sycamore, 587, 590
Syllis ramosa, 145, 146
Symbiosis, 177, 555-562
Sympathetic nerves. See Nervous system
Symphytum, 230
Syncoryne, 280
Syndyoceras, 471
Synodontis, 570
Syphilis, 182, 625, 631, 633
Syria, 241, 493
Syrian desert, 540
TABLE-TAPPING, 842
Tabus, 860-864, 866, 867, 868
Tadpoles, 115, 534; transformation of, 321-323, 323
Tænia, 142
Taiga, 590
Tail, 28; characteristic of vertebrates, 409; in birds, 212; in human embryo, 28, 94, 254, 94; prehensile, 546
Tamandua, 238
Tanganyika, Lake, 539
Tapeworm, 138, 142, 555, 562, 596, 564
Tapir, 110, 236, 243, 571, 243, 471
Tarpon, 564
Tarsius, 482; brain of, 767
Tartary, 177
Tasmania, 236
Tasmanian devil, 236, 235
Taste, 75; in fishes, 727
Taungs skull, 483
Taunus, 397
Tea, use and abuse of, 644
Tealia, 151
Teeth, in horses, 204-209, 264; of sabre-toothed tiger, 384; of Trachodon, 460; vitamin D and the, 638
Telangium, 436
Telegony, 310
Telekinesis, 843
Telepathy, 840-842
Teleplasm, 845-851
Temora, 595
Temperament, in dogs, 785; in man, 821-826
Temperature, and life, 7, 553; of deserts, 541; of the body, 22, 60, 61, 648, 649; of the sea, 400, 519; sense of, 73, 74
Tendons, 33
Tenrec, 471
Terebratula, 143
Teredo, 529
Termites, 558, 583, 707-709, 709
Terrapin, 113
Territorial instinct in birds, 603
Tertiary period, 197, 476
Testes, 91, 102, 91
Testis-grafts, 335
Tetanus, 623, 631
Tetrabelodon, 471
Texan ant, 700
Texas, 551, 750
Thalamus, 726, 729, 765
Thalassiosira, 595
Thames, 488
Thayer, 571
Theriodonts, 448
Theromorphs, 213, 213, 449
Thirlmere, 551
Thistle, 610
Thorax, 27
Thomson, Sir Basil, 870
- Prof. J. Arthur, 8
Thorium, 255, 256
Thorn-scrub, African, 590
Thrush, 752
Thylacoleo, 241
Thymallus vulgaris, 536
Thymus, 102
Thyroid extract, effect of, 322. See Thyroxin
- gland, 90, 97, 100, 102, 108, 67; and growth, 322
Thyroxin, 100, 102, 645
Tibet, 540
Tibetan sheep, 544
Tick-bird, 597, 597
Tiger, sabre-toothed, 384; species of, 232
Tillandsia, 546
Tillyard, Dr. R. J., 848
Time. See Geological time
- idea of, in animals, 687, 688
Tissandier, Gaston, 7
Tissue culture, 29
Titanotheres, 211, 473, 471
Titanotherium, 381, 471
Tit, longtailed, 601
Toad, common, 115, 115; evolution of, 449; poison of, 671
Toadstools, 174, 175
Tobacco, 351, 463; use and abuse of, 641, 643, 644, 645, 654, 659
Tomopteris, 595
Tooth. See Teeth
Torpedo, 424, 672
Torres Straits, 530
Tortoise, 113, 457, 449; gamete of, 273
Touch, sense of, 72
Toxeuma, 518
Toxodon, 475, 237
Tozzia, 558
Trachea, 40
Tracheæ, 116, 465-466
Trachodon, 101, 460, 449, 458
Traditionalism, passing of, 870-871
Transformism, 261, 262
Tree, method of grafting a, 276, 276
Tree ant-eater, 238
Tree-ferns, 162
Tree-frog, 545, 671, 729-730
Tree-shrew, brain of, 767
Tree-toad, 545
Trembley, Abbé, 277
Trepang, 135
Triassic period, 196, 421, 426, 442, 445, 446, 448, 451, 452, 453, 458, 460, 461, 468, 470, 472, 198, 410
Triceratops, 449
Trichina, 555
Trichinella, 139
- spiralis, 139
Trichomonas, 402
Triconodonts, 449
Tridacna, 594, 564
Trilobites, 413-415, 421, 415, 414, 420
Trinidad, 464
Trinil, 251
Tripe de roche, 177
Trituberculates, 449
Trochophore larva, 513
Tropical forest, life in, 544
Tropisms, 680
Trout, 536, 609, 727
Trypanosomes, 556, 568
Tsetse fly, 612, 628, 629
Tuatera, 469
Tuberculosis, 657-658; bacillus of, 568, 625
Tube-worm, eye of the, 669, 669
Tubifex, 535
Tulip, 379
Turbot, 226
Turkestan, 540
Turtle, 113, 449, 452; an abnormally developed, 316
Twins, 338
Tylenchus scandens, 140
Typhlomolge, 551
Typhoid fever, 218, 631; and oysters, 640; bacillus of, 568, 612
Typhus fever, 628
Typotheres, 240, 475, 471
Tyrannosaurus, 459, 467, 449, 564
UCA PUGILATOR, 329
Ultramicroscopic organisms, 185-186
Ultramicroscopic particles, size of, 396
Ultra-violet light, 186, 646, 651, 652; and vitamins, 639
Umbilical cord, 96, 96
Unconscious, the, 795-798
Unguiculates, 107
Ungulates, 110, 107, 471
Universe, scale of the, 391-393
Upper Cambrian period, 419
- Carboniferous period, 437
- Devonian period, 436, 441, 442
- Egypt, 483
- Jurassic period, 455, 452
- Silurian period, 416
Uranium, 255, 256
Ureter, 45, 91, 92
Urinary organs, 45
Urine, 45
Use, moulding power of, 310; and disease, in evolution, 354; in the developing embryo, 319
Ussher, Archbishop, 198
Uterus, 92, 93, 94, 97, 91
VACCINATION, 630, 631
Vagina,
Vagus nerve, the, 722
Vallisneria, 538
Vanadium, 379
Vancouver, 490
Vanua Levu, 610
Varanus, 453, 468, 564
Variation, 350, 359; accidental and inherited, 287-290; in plants, 363. See Mutation
-- local, 373-377; in apes, 859; in man, 863-864
Variation, failures of, 377-379
Vas deferens, 334
Vegetables, value of green, 639; contamination of, 640
Vegetarianism, 635
Vegetation, belts of, 593
Veins, 36, 37, 38, 39
Velella, 520
Vendace, 375
Venereal disease, 633, 815, 836
Ventricles of heart, 37, 38
Venus' Flower-basket, 524
Venus' girdle, 152
Vertebral column, 24
Vertebrates, 105-119, 423, 456, 585; behaviour of the lower, 720-735; characteristics 107; classes of, 109; contrasted with arthropods, 120; evolution of, 408, 422-425, 437-442, 447-461, 465-467; 470-475, 48I-495, 420, 475, 499; flying, 456
Vespa. See Wasps
Vestiges, 220-222
Vestigial limbs, 220, 221
- Organs in man, 253, 254, as evidence for evolution, 220-222
Vetch, 558
Vlceroy butterfly, 573
Vienna, 632
Villi, 55
Vinciguerria, 521
Vinegar bacteria, 183
Viola tricolor, 378
Virgin reproduction, 274
Virus diseases, 185-186, 615-626
Viscera, 92
Vital energy, source of, 21-22
Vitamins, 514, 636-639
Viti Levu, 610
Vivisection, 14, 775
Vizcacha, 236, 238
Volcano of Krakatoa, 584
Volvox, 404, 674
Von Baer, 223, 224
Von Frisch, 711, 714, 715, 716, 718
Von Humboldt, Baron (1767-1835), 709
Voronoff, Serge, 90, 102, 330, 335
Vorticella, 402, 567
Vulpes, 231; V. vulpes, 231; V. zerda, 131. See Fox
Vulture, 669
WAITOMO CAVES, New Zealand, 552
Wales, 491
Wallaby, 137
Wallace, Alfred Russel (1823-1913), 242, 263, 544
Walnut, 590
Walrus, 111, 548
War, the supersession of, 871-872
Warble-fly, 556
Warblers, courtship of, 737
Warfare, primitive, 870-871
Warning coloration, 572
Wart-hog, 136, 474
Wasmann, 707
Wasps, 575, 695-697; solitary, 695-697
Water, as habitat, 502; contamination of, 648; importance of, to organisms, 47; life in fresh, 531, 553; life in salt, 508-512; supply, and disease, 554, 623
Water-beetle, 534; larva of, 532, 534
Water-flea, 351, 408, 566
Water-lily, 534
Water-measurer, 534
Water-plantain, 587
Water-plants, early, 403
Water-scorpion, 534
Water-snail, 146
Water-spider, 534
Water-weed, Canadian, 364
Watson, Dr. J. B., 787, 788, 789, 790
Weasel, 111, 471
Weather and bacteria, 625
Weights of living things, 562-568
Weismann, August (1834-1914), 264, 280, 355
West Indies, 152
Whale, 7, 111, 112, 474, 514, 519, 549; Greenland Right, 220; sulphur-bottom, 564; whalebone, 504, 471
Whalebone, 112, 504
Whale-shark, 564
Wheat, 303, 304, 614, 615
Wheel-animalcules, 142, 567
Whelk, 131, 132
Whirligig beetles, 534
White Admiral butterfly, 573
White ants, 707-709, 709
- melilot, 587
Wholemeal bread, value of, 636
Whooping cough, 63I
Wight, Isle of, 469
Williamsonia, 462
Willow, 586, 591
Windpipe, 40
Winkle, 131
Winton, Prof. W. M., 256
Wöhler, 6
Wolf, 548, 471; European, 231, 232; maned, 231, 234; marsupial, 237; range of the, 231, 232; timber, 232
Wombat, 237, 235
Wood-ants, 701
Woodcock, 570
Woodlouse, 413, 542
Woodpecker, 378; North American, 233
Word-blindness, 769
Word-deafness, 769
Worms, 137, 138, 139, 140, 141, 142; evolution of, 406; eyes of, 667; flat, 140; intelligence in, 677; marine, 138, 145; nemertine, 142; parasitic, 139; round, 138; segmented, 406
Wren, common, 571, 737
Wrens, geographical variation in, 373
Wyoming, Bad Lands of, 202
Wyville-Thomson ridge, 488, 489
YEAST, 174, 176
Yellow fever, 612, 629
"Yeoman" wheat, 304
Ypsipetes trifasciata, 361
Yucca, 464, 692
ZEBRA, 110, 203, 236, 377, 235
Zeuglodont, 474, 471
Zoaea larva, 513
Zones of the sea, 509
Zoophyta, 149
Zostera, 538
Zygote, 273
END
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blue, with gold title: 'THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY VOL. I' and 'THE OUTLINE.. VOL. II'. H G Wells. I couldn't find their publication date anywhere. With great self-confidence, only the title, without the author's name, appears on the outside! Altogether there are about fifty colour plates reproduced by some rather uncertain process
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HUXLEY,JULIAN: ESSAYS.OF.A.BIOLOGIST [1923*]
- 'Essays in Popular Science' published by Penguin as a blue Pelican from 1937 and into the 1940s and given first publication date of 1926, might, I thought, consist of these essays retitled: in fact they contain an account of chromosomes, and also an essay 'Why Do More Boy Babies Die than Girl Babies?' answering this with the X-Y chromosome and the fact that recessive genes show themselves more.
- 'Professor of Zoology in the University of London (King's College)' [This must have preceded his resignation to work with H G Wells on 'The Science of Life']
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huxley with Gilbert Murray and Beveridge during a Brains Trust broadcast
huxley Collaboration (after thinking 'What am I doing with this little philistine?') with H G Wells and Gip and distributing the income; Huxley boasts he made £10,000 as Wells had predicted. Wells' knowledge was out of date - pre-Mendelian (not pre-Darwinian). Interesting stuff on H G Wells's pushy forcefulness, with many letters, and Julian's reflections on the completed 3-volume work, which in retrospect surprised him with its sweep and comprehensiveness.
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Mon 6 Jan, 1992: Film by Michael Richard made over two years, and dated 1991, in 1600 square miles of West Africa rain forest in Ivory Coast, called Tai Forest. Top of canopy 60 metres. Voiceover said it was unusually rich rainforest, having been spared forest fires in prehistoric times. Christophe and Hedwige Boesch had spent 5 years getting used to a band of chimps which had 7 adult males, about 20 females, and about 30 juveniles [approx]. The Boesches also had two children; we see them being bathed by a youngish black boy; apparently they'd known no other home than their long thatched hut. We see them, standing, unsmiling, immobile, making notes, which they did, or do, for
enough hours to fill a full working day. David Attenborough reads the script. As we watch them cracking nuts on the forest floor, and watching out for leopards, with hefty sticks and also with stone 'tools' they carry around for the purpose, [unlike, the voiceover says, any other known chimps], "Are they too close for comfort?"
We're told they have a 'warm, intimate society'. They spend 6 or 7 hours a day looking for food. This includes nuts, some very tough to crack, and fruit, which they collect then take to a pool or river to wash. We see them, mouths full of pulp, which they suck to extract the juice. [Not made clear whether they spit out the pulp after].
Males become adult at 15, females at 13.
These chimps have 19 tools - "More than any species except man." Including nut cracking methods, which take ten years to learn; drumming on the buttress of trees as a signal; a bunch of leaves, shoved into a tree hole, which act as a sponge and can be sucked for water; and a stick, prodded into a soldier ants nest, to which the ants grip, and from which they can be eaten if the chimp's quick. They also make beds in the canopy by bending branches of trees "in two minutes." We see what looks like a smallish chimp bend a few leafy but thin and flexible boughs, snuggle down! They have strong arms, and prehensile toes, and so can climb pretty much straight up trees. [Rain forest trees appear to be nice and thorn- and sticky-stuff-free]
We see a colobus monkey hunt. This "shocked the Boeschs at first.. they later came to admire the cooperation and fair sharing of the kill.." Red colobus monkeys look nervous, pick up young, bound off. Singly they can survive by balancing on branches too thin for chimps, so the only chance is to hunt in groups. The film, voiceovered with synthetic excitement like a horse race, but with confusing intercut sequences, didn't make it clear how well-planned the thing was, but at any rate one chimp chased them, another tried to block their way, more 'monitored' the chase from the ground. The red colobuses escaped, but by luck some black and white colobuses ['quieter' species; black with long even thin white tail, like a cat's toy] "their favourite prey" are disturbed as they descend the trees, and one's caught. Tremendous screaming, apparently from females, as at pop concert. "The newly dominant male is furious.. he's been excluded from the kill.. the old females have sided with [greyback].. they won't let him get to the meat.. the meat is divided.. dominant members share it with their friends.."
nothing on insect evolution?
A MATTER OF LIFE AND DEATH 1946. c. 90 minutes TV version. 'Black and white fantasy and technicolor drama'. English pilot .. Richard Attenborough
Screenplay David Divine and W.P. Lipscomb
Based on 'The Big Pick-up' by Elleston Trevor & 'Dunkirk' by Lt. Col. Ewan Butler & Major J.S. Bradford
Produced Michael Balcon; directed Leslie Norman
Blurb: '.. neatly judged over the top performances perfectly complement the writers' sardonic views of life and death. Particularly effective are Lee Remick and Richard Attenborough as a distinctly odd policeman.'
'Denis and Hal rob a bank and hide the money in a funeral parlour where Dennis works. But things go wrong when they try to fit the loot and corpse in the same coffin.'
Inspector .. Richard Attenborough [Grey suit, with four large round medals on his watch chain. Hitler moustache. Acts with his face pushed forward in a sort of pout. Detectives seem to get a rough deal in the British theatre - maybe they were associated with activity against homosexuals?]
10 RILLINGTON PLACE - directed by Richard Fleischer. It stars Richard Attenborough, John Hurt and Judy Geeson
YOUNG WINSTON 1972. 140 minutes TV version. Colour. Director: Richard Attenborough
GANDHI 1982. Produced & directed by Richard Attenborough; screenplay John Briley. 8 Oscars
A CHORUS LINE 1985. Broadway's longest running musical off the ground, the job of directing this all-American sacred cow went to limey Richard Attenborough - to howls of derision. The rancour now seems justified, given that the end product is a bland, uninvolving affair. The all-important dance numbers are flashier than they were on stage, but Attenborough ruins the routines by constantly breaking away to take in yet another reaction shot.'
CRY FREEDOM 1987 director: Richard Attenborough.