Titled in reference to, and honor of, Phillip Henry Gosse’s classic 1861 book The Romance of Natural History , Dr. Lynn Merrill’s The Romance of Victorian Natural History presents an examination of not only Mr. Gosse’s own writings but those of his Nineteenth Century fellow amateur natural history practitioners as well. Yet even if this […]
The phrase “here there be dragons,” so famously seen on old maps indicating places where there were great and mysterious dangers to be found, was not so very long ago not simply a metaphor. In fact, no less an authority on natural philosophy (what would later become known as natural history) than Linnaeus himself included […]
To quote Mr. Bruce Springsteen, “Born in the U.S.A / I was born in the U.S.A.” As such, and still residing there, I have too often found it too easy to become somewhat isolated from the rest of the world. As a country, the United States is both geographically large and culturally… well, loud might […]
Sir Winston Churchill once famously remarked “Dogs look up to you, cats look down on you. Give me a pig! He looks you in the eye and treats you as an equal.” At least so said Sir Anthony Montague Browne, Sir Winston’s private secretary. And for my part, I very much hope he did – […]