Non Fiction Authors From England

"Science has wonders far transcending those of superstition, and they are poor philosophers who try to bring Nature down to the level of their small capacities instead of striving to exalt those capacities to the height of creation's truth. No savage, worshipping the most preposterous idol, ever believed greater absurdities than a modern sceptic, who makes his small modicum of reason the standard by which to measure the boundless universe."

"Peter Vansittart, who has died aged 88, was a master of the historical novel and a writer of outstanding talent. He wrote more than 40 books, which also encompassed anthologies, works on literature and . As he was the first to concede, the reading public could be slow to enjoy his novels. He put this down to his “obsession with language and speculation at the expense of narrative, however much I relish narrative in others”. Nonetheless, he was admired by critics and fellow authors. To , he was “a master of description”, and to , “a carefully accurate historian [and] a splendidly imaginative writer of fiction”."

"War was justified, especially if the foe was weakly armed, and, preferably, coloured. Beautiful women asserted themselves through romantic bitchiness (which left men very stricken or very bored), through espionage, leading to sudden death in exotic circumstances, or through hunting: 'Gad, George, she keeps her seat like a man, damme, she does.'"

"was always to attribute depression to ill-health or, when she was much older, to the prevailing east wind. She never assumed it was a facet of her temperament or that her life could reasonably cause it."

"'s letters to Ray give a very good idea of her literary influences. These were definitely not her mother's her favorites (Hardy, ', Gissing) and Elizabeth has grown out of Dostoevsky, dislikes Dickens, finds Lawrence a 'bloody crosspatch' and thinks Katherine Mansfield moaned too much. 'It is easy to see who is behind me: Jane Austen & Chekhov & EM Forster & Virginia Woolf. ...' ... Other important writers for her were Sterne (for his relationship to the reader), Richardson and Fielding. Above all she revered Jane Austen and Turgenev."

"It’s possible, these days, to think of E. M. Forster's cultural role as the providing of stories for to make into pretty movies. For people who think that way, Nicola Beauman's new biography will be a useful corrective. Here, in a book of modest length (at last, a biography that is not longer than its subject's collected works!), is what every general reader should know about Forster's life and contacts."

"By about 1900 BC, successive invaders, notably from Spain, were ousting Stone Age rulers and bringing Britain into the Mediterranean trade orbit. Sophisticated engineers erected , the , the 20,000 s and smaller stone circles signalling to a sky thick with gods."

"On the atomic scale, we do not understand gravity and its relationship with Nature's other forces. At the other end of the scale, current dogma maintains that the universe was created at some specific moment some 13.6 billion years ago. It then requires an almost immediate but transient expansion at speeds vastly exceeding the velocity of light in order that predictions from current theories can be made compatible with what we actually observe."

"All done, all fled, and now we faint and tire— The Feast is over and the lamps expire! ... All dim, all pale—so lift me on the pyre— The Feast is over and the lamps expire!"

"If you were standing on the edge of a cliff, you might go over the edge and suffer consequences that would probably be nonlinear and unpleasant. But if linear processes ruled the world, there would be no cliffs."

"Today's world is truly bizarre. The emperor's new clothes are constantly admired although many can see that he is stark naked. But Smith's invisible hand and other philosophies advocating freedom seem to be denied because it is impossible to see them."

"For creativity to flourish, it does not necessarily need encouragement. Indeed, since its origins are not understood it may be impossible to encourage. But intellectual pioneers need environments that accommodate dissent."

"Such abstract qualities as freedom are difficult or impossible to define. Freedom's loss may be easier to recognise, but it does not necessarily lead to chains. Increasingly nowadays, freedom is a managed commodity, but the consequences are subtle and varied."

"In the 1960s, IBM's chairman, Thomas Watson Sr., began the Fellows Program, in which he appointed Fellows (he called them his "wild ducks") for five years to be "dreamers, heretics, mavericks, gadflies, and geniuses." Their remit was simply to "shake up the system." The Fellows Program has been supremely successful. Only some 165 scientists were appointed, but five of these won Nobel Prizes. General Electric and Bell Laboratories ran similar programs. In 1980, as I have mentioned, BP launched Venture Research, arguably one of the most ambitious and imaginative exploratory research initiatives in industrial history, and supported it for 10 years."

"It's been forgotten that we did not need special arrangements for finding the Einsteins in the past. There was enough flexibility in the system to allow them to emerge, but that's been removed in the quest for efficiency."

"There are curious remains near Cairo of a , where portions of trees have been found measuring 60 to 90 feet in length and 3 feet in diameter. It is said to have been formed by a deposit of sand and water which in the course of ages petrified the wood. But although there is little doubt that primeval forests existed in Egypt, they must have disappeared at a very early date, as no special mention of them occurs, either in the oldest monuments or writings."

"The Egyptians possessed much interesting literature, of which poetry formed an important part. The hymns to , , and , and that of , are all beautiful specimens; and so, likewise, is the epic poem to , known as the ".""

"In 1844, (once captain of the ', now Governor of New Zealand) interviewed an ancient named Haumatangi who claimed to have seen, when only a boy, and — 2 years earlier than this — the trapping of a . Another aged Maori, Kawane Paipai, recalled taking part in moa hunts on the plains of during the final years of the eighteenth century."

"The , as it is sometimes called, lives in damp woods, where it can find plenty of insects. It catches them on the wing, as well as picking them off plants and trees. Its colouring is grey above with black streaks on its head; its breast is yellow, with a row of black marks across it, set like a ’s . Its song is louder than that of most s, but very sweet and clear."

"Anyone looking quickly at a stuffed might think it was a , and this is hardly surprising. Except for its enormous beak, an auk looks very much like a penguin. Penguins are largely black and white. So are auks. When out of the water, penguins tend to stand upright, with their short legs mostly hidden by feathers and body. Great auks stood in much the same way. Neither penguins nor great auks have wings that are capable of flight. Instead, they both became perfectly adapted to life in the sea, where, over eons, they developed extraordinary diving and swimming abilities. Each became so adept at living in watery conditions that their lives were given up almost exclusively to water. The life of a penguin is probably quite similar to the life great auks used to lead. But although there are so many similarities, there is no close relationship between these birds. The similarities are superficial, and they are examples of what is known as ".""

"Occasionally, some tropical bird may perhaps be tempted north in search of food. Among these are the lovely little yellow-breasted s, which are met with in , and, I believe, have sometimes been seen as far north as . s are visitors on the Nile, and brilliant s, too, we saw in the , going to their more Northern homes in Syria, Spain, and Italy. The low sand banks in the river, or some lonely place in the desert, are nightly chosen as resting-places for the s, which are only travellers in the land."

"Sometimes the of a species can be traced back to a single cause. More often there are a number of contributory factors. But the case of the has everything: murder, habitat destruction, political interference, the introduction of an alien species, dilution of the bloodstock by hybridisation, the effects of tourism, pollution, civil war, and an earthquake. Perhaps just as extraordinary as any of these things is the fact that the final years of its destruction were chronicled in the most intense detail by a fanatically dedicated woman named (1935–2011). In numerous magazine articles and papers in learned journals she recounted the story of her attempts to save the birds from disaster, and pleaded for help with her efforts. Finally, when all was lost, she wrote a highly personal book. Called Mama Poc (poc being the sound the birds made) and published in 1990, it is a thorough record of her forlorn struggle to save the species."

"More words have been written about the dodo than about any other extinct bird. Yet the truth is that almost nothing is known of this strange creature. The bird lived only on the small, isolated island of Mauritius, way out in the , and the first notice of it comes in a book published in 1599. Around 60 years later the species was extinct. What survives from this brief period of interaction with human beings is very little. There are some 15 written accounts (most of which are disappointingly lacking in informative content), a similar number of paintings (some of which contradict others), a large pile of bones, and a stuffed head and foot."

"The story of the reads like a work of fiction. At the start of the nineteenth century these birds existed in unimaginable numbers — billions upon billions. The species may have made up as much as 40 percent of the bird population of North America. It may even have been the most numerous bird species on the planet. The flocks were so large and dense they blackened the skies, blotted out the sun. But by the century's end it was over; the birds were gone from the wild. By the year 1914 just a single individual (out of all the countless millions) was left. She was called and she lived alone in a cage at the . In September this last representative of her species died, and as a living entity the Passenger Pigeon was no more. Along with the , the , and the , the species had become one of the great icons of ."

"From the woods of north-west America came that familiar evergreen shrub ', which in some gardens to-day is almost a weed; yet such was the enthusiasm with which it was first received that roots commanded a price of ten s each."

"It was not till the middle of the nineteenth century that the rich harvest of American s really began to be garnered, though the had already introduced from there in 1663."

"During his long period on the academic staff of Salisbury’s scientific reputation rose steadily with the publication of a succession of research papers in botanical and other journals and of several important books, including The reproductive capacity of plants (1942), and also through his frequent and much acclaimed lectures to a wide range of botanical and horticultural audiences. He was President of the in 1928, Vice-President of the in 1928-9, and in 1933 he was elected a . In 1937 he became President of Section K of the and in 1939 was made Then in 1943 he was appointed to the Directorship of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, made vacant by the death of ."

"... the is extremely tolerant of . It can grow quite well with as much as 1.5% of salt in the sand and will tolerate up to 6%. Moreover, it will endure quite prolonged inundation by a high tide."

"It is tempting to assume that the process of natural selection has brought about a nicety of adjustment between the seed output and mortality, and this presumption is implicit in most of the writings on this topic. If true, it involves as a necessary corollary that the potential of a species is a measure of its susceptibility to natural mortality."

"All the British s produce viable fruits without the necessity for fertilization () so that, although they have all the advantages of dispersal associated with normal seed production (in this instance of the parachute-bearing fruits), yet their reproduction is equivalent to vegetative propagation."

"An article in ' in June 1959 described Sir Edward James Salisbury as a “prophet and propagandist of botany”. Inspired by the plants that grew wild in his native , he became a pioneering ecologist, lecturer, author – The Living Garden (1935) was a bestseller – and, from 1943-56, director of the . He was also a keen photographer and a large collection of his glass plate negatives – natural landscapes and individual plant studies – was recently discovered in the archives."

"In 's for 1758, p. 116, mention is made of an in , near , the property of the , supposed to be of near one thousand years growth. It was six feet two inches in diameter, contained about ten tons of timber, and was sold for forty pounds."

"Potatoe is the English name of the tuberose-rooted esculent Lycopersicon, or , of botanical writers. It was evidently so called on account of its similarity to the batata, the name of the , which was known in Europe at least thirty-three years before this country was blessed with the potatoe, which now forms alike the rich man's luxury and the poor man's bread!"

"Theophrastus, who wrote about 300 years before Christ, mentions the as the only tree in Greece that produced the blossoms before the leaves. ... The almond-tree was not cultivated in Italy in the time of Cato, who calls the fruit, nucces græcæ, or greek nuts."

",who was in the in 1573, was the first European author who made any mention of coffee."

"The ancient and silent language of flowers lends its aid to gratitude, friendship, filial love, and maternal fondness. Even affliction may be soothed by the emblematical communication of sentiment. , when imprisoned by the tyrants of the , amused himself by the study of floral language, his daughter being allowed to send him flowers to the prison. Thence a few days before he met his fate on the scaffold, he sent back to this favorite child, two dried , to express both the purity of his heart, and the fate which awaited him."

"We repaired to the . The powdery appearance was caused by glands scattered all over the ; this, and its general aspect, showed it to be the . No locality could be more favourable to its growth than these woods, where the immense boulders of greeting us at every step left no room to doubt the nature of the rock."

", in his work on the "Channel Islands," gives a most interesting picture of the harvest in . On the 10th of March and on the 20th of July, all the inhabitants repair to the shore, with such vehicles as they can press into their service, and they gather the weed in great quantities. Some they dry and use for fuel, and the remainder is laid upon the land as manure. It suits potatoe land remarkably well, and on this account is eagerly seized upon in Ireland, where it is carried at least fifteen miles inland."

"The pretty white , so called because of its flowering at that season, is also a , and its is a brilliant white. Its beauty and purity, as well as the season when it blooms, insure it being a favourite in every garden."

"The Chinese hold some particular kinds of flowers in great veneration, especially the , which they call Too Chong Fa: its flowers are deemed grateful to the gods; and, accordingly. at the commencement of the ,when the plant is generally in blossom, large branches with flowers are placed in all the temples as an acceptable new year's offering."

"Travellers penetrating to the find ' flourishing alone, and spreading its light s in a region of "thick-ribbed ice;" ' was found by on ; and in and Iceland, where there is scarcely light enough for the humblest vegetables to flourish, ' not only endures the sleet and bitter cold, and spreads its blossoms under such inhospitable circumstances, but actually ripens abundance of seed."

"As an important member of the flora of Northern Europe, ' is commonly associated with s of a definite type, especially when it occurs as the dominant or sub-dominant species of moorland associations. As such, it is especially characterists of dry heath soils, deficient in and often ."

"A fresh attempt to survey the whole field and correlate the problems of nutrition presented by mycorrhiza plants with those in parasites and insectivorous plants was made by at the opening of the new century (Stahl, 1900). This paper, the most comprehensive study of mycorrhiza from the biological point of view since the publication of 's theory of in trees, has been freely quoted in the text-books and is probably one of the best-known contributions to the literature of the subject. Two aspects of Stahl's work demand attention: firstly, the new hypothesis put forward by him to explain the distribution of fungus infection in s and its beneficial effect upon the hosts, and secondly, the character of the experimental evidence offered in support of his opinions."

"It is not only that the bias of elementary es tends to give the whole subject an aloofness which helps to perpetuate the common attitude that Science is something essentially different and apart from the facts of every day life, it is that it makes it difficult for any but a most experienced and able lecturer to introduce the student to the study of plants in the light of the more recent as well as the older phases of botanical knowledge."

"Mr. W. F. French, of , prepares very pretty fern-glasses, arranging within them Lilliputian rocks and ruins. They are to be had at the s in ; and, though they do not look by any means beautiful when unfurnished, they have an excellent effect with the full complement of mosses, s, and ferns. The best place for such cases is in a window to the north, and twice a week in the summer the glass should be removed and wiped dry, a little rain-water being administered occasionally to keep up the moisture. These fern-cases make very elegant drawing-room ornaments. All the small hardy and half-hardy ferns are well adapted for the s, as are also many of the 's and all the mosses."

"In Trees and Toadstools, Rayner has given us an account, written in clear language understandable to the layman interested in science, of the symbiotic relationship which has been found to prevail between the of many of the higher fungi and forest trees. ... the story of 's epochal discoveries, originally initiated as a project to increase the supply of s but resulting in the real opening of research on the important field of forest tree root and fungus association, is well told in simple language."

"' is a large genus of which one of the best known species is ', a destructive parasite of , but including also species parasitic on economically valuable trees, such as , and many s."

"For books he had no respect, but merely considered them as tools to be worked with. Thus he did not bind them, and even when a paper book fell to pieces from use, as happened to Müller’s ‘Befruchtung,’ he preserved it from complete dissolution by putting a metal clip over its back. In the same way he would cut a heavy book in half, to make it more convenient to hold. He used to boast that he had made Lyell publish the second edition of one of his books in two volumes, instead of in one, by telling him how ho had been obliged to cut it in half. Pamphlets were often treated even more severely than books, for he would tear out, for the sake of saving room, all the pages except the one that interested him, The consequence of all this was, that his library was not ornamental, but was striking from being so evidently a working collection of books."

"1 Hypogeous are those soil fungi which produce macroscopic partially or completely embedded in soil or humus. While showing a superficial similarity correlated with habitat, they include members of the , and . 2 The edible s have been known from very early times, and speculations as to their nature are found in Greek and Roman literature. Other groups, which are not edible, were described later. The monographs of (1831, 1842) and & (1851) are the starting-point for all modern work on these fungi."

"The are remarkable for diversity of both form and function. Their ability to break down and to synthesize complex substances largely accounts for their success in colonizing widely different habitats, and has them of the greatest economic importance as parasites, as s in the soil and on varied commercial products, and as the producers of s, organic acids and other substances useful to man."