Nature Books

MY DEAR SIR, BY inscribing this Volume to you I am merely discharging a debt of gratitude and justice. But for you I believe it would not have been printed; for you not only advocated its publication, but have generously contributed to diminish the cost of its production to the "WILTSHIRE TOPOGRAPHICAL SOCIETY", under whose auspices it is now submitted to the public. Though comparatively... more...

INTRODUCTION One of the effects of the modern advance in natural science has been greatly to increase the attention which is devoted to the influences that the conditions of diverse peoples have had upon their development. Man is no longer looked upon, as he was of old, as a being which had been imposed upon the earth in a sudden and arbitrary manner, set to rule the world into which he had been sent... more...

CHAPTER XXI. THE MOLUCCAS—TERNATE. ON the morning of the 8th of January, 1858, I arrived at Ternate, the fourth of a row of fine conical volcanic islands which shirt the west coast of the large and almost unknown island of Gilolo. The largest and most perfectly conical mountain is Tidore, which is over four thousand Feet high—Ternate being very nearly the same height, but with a more rounded and... more...

I. MEGALEEP THE WANDERER. Megaleep is the big woodland caribou of the northern wilderness. His Milicete name means The Wandering One, but it ought to mean the Mysterious and the Changeful as well. If you hear that he is bold and fearless, that is true; and if you are told that he is shy and wary and inapproachable, that is also true. For he is never the same two days in succession. At once shy and... more...

IN THE SNOW It was a bright, wintry day. The frost jewels sparkled on the snow. The winds blew cutting cold from the north. Phyllis, in her scarlet coat and cap, and long, warm leggings, waded in the deepest drifts she could find. Out by the garden fence was the greatest drift. After floundering through it, Phyllis climbed up and perched on the top rail of the fence. She sat quite still, for she was... more...

LET us now, in order to form a clearer conception of the bees' intellectual power, proceed to consider their methods of inter-communication. There can be no doubting that they understand each other; and indeed it were surely impossible for a republic so considerable, wherein the labours are so varied and so marvellously combined, to subsist amid the silence and spiritual isolation of so many... more...

ON THE IMPREGNATION OF THE QUEEN BEE. SIR, When I had the honour at Genthod of giving you an account of my principal experiments on bees, you desired me to transmit a written detail, that you might consider them with greater attention. I hasten, therefore, to extract the following observations from my journal.—As nothing can be more flattering to me than the interest you take in my researches, permit... more...

INTRODUCTION This beautiful volume has been written for a good purpose. I had the pleasure of reading the proof-sheets of the book while in the Yellowstone National Park, where no gun may be lawfully fired at any of God's creatures. All animals there are becoming tame, and the great bears come out of the woods to feed on the garbage of the hotels and camps, fearless of the tourists, who look on... more...

To this day it is hard to understand how any eyes could have found them, they were so perfectly hidden. I was following a little brook, which led me by its singing to a deep dingle in the very heart of the big woods. A great fallen tree lay across my path and made a bridge over the stream. Now, bridges are for crossing; that is plain to even the least of the wood folk; so I sat down on the mossy trunk... more...

When Gerrit S. Miller, Jr., published his "Revision of the North American Bats of the Family Vespertilionidae" (N. Amer. Fauna, 13:1-140, 3 pls., 39 figs. in text, October 16, 1897), the red bat, Lasiurus borealis, was known from the southern half of Mexico but he did not know that the hoary bat, Lasiurus cinereus, also occurred there. Therefore, the name A[talapha]. mexicana Saussure (Revue et... more...