For those who might be wishing to commemorate this anniversary of the publication of Charles Darwin’s first edition of On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, I highly recommend doing so with a copy of David N. Reznick’s The Origin Then and Now: An Interpretive Guide to the Origin of Species close at hand.
What is it like to be a bee? Not so much what does it physically feel like, but rather on a social, perhaps even an emotional level? When you think about how bees act in relation to one another, how the societies they form function, it’s not all that difficult to see some decidedly positive characteristics in bee societies that would possibly improve our own if adopted.
When you hear names of bird species such as Cetti’s Warbler, Townsend’s Solitaire, or MacGillivray’s Fairy-wren, do you ever stop and give thought to who Cetti, Townsend, or MacGillivray were? And for that matter, was MacGillivray the same MacGillivray of the MacGillivray’s Warbler?
When I first thumbed through the new Britain’s Habitats: A Guide to the Wildlife Habitats of Britain and Ireland, I was not only taken by how helpful it could be to a naturalist seeking to acquire or refine an understanding of those nations’ multifaceted countrysides, I was also struck by how useful the book could be to someone studying English literature.