science-authors

"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."

"The may easily be mistaken for a male in flight. They are identical in size and are similarly barred below. The illusion is often fostered in late summer by young cuckoos being seen in flight with their foster-parents, much smaller birds ..."

"One of the areas whose birds have been given rather less attention than most is the arid western regions of South Africa. For various reasons it has been, and still is, an inhospitable country, in spite of the kindly disposition of its thinly scattered population. Its political history, at times somewhat turbulent; its desolate and fog-bound coastline, now made doubly inapproachable because of protective measures against illicit diamond prospecting; its vast hinterland of and ; and its own arid mountains and plains have discouraged travellers and ornithological pursuits. Although the birds of this region have been studied relatively infrequently most of the species represented have been known for a long time. The first ornithological survey of any importance took place as early as 1783-5 when the French naturalist, , made his second great journey ‘into the interior parts of Africa from the ’."

"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."

"The first stage coach passed through on Monday, April 12th, 1742. ... , presented great difficulties for coaches, seven or eight horses were required to take the coach from Brewer's Hill Road to the top of the hill."

"The (certainly one of the most exquisitely delicious of all our fungi) is generally neglected, or regarded with great suspicion. Under the name of 'champillion,' however, it is well known to the weavers and labouring men of the , who may be seen gathering it in considerable numbers any autumn day amongst the short grass of ."

"Mr. Worthington Smith has devoted himself for many years to a study of the localities near London where implements have been found, and has described the various floors with great minuteness, and illustrated them with great artistic skill. In this book he brings all his previous discoveries together, and groups them round his last work at , near , on the borders of and . He has presented to us a monograph on palæolithic camping-places, rather than a general treatise on Man, the Primeval Savage."

"Owing to their lack of and inability to utilize , the stood out as possessing a mode of life fundamentally different from that of green plants. Observations by Pasteur in 1860 and 1862, by in 1879 and 1883, and by in 1883 all showed the former could use a great variety of carbon compounds as food materials."

"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."

"Worthington Smith was an important member of the group of archaeologists whose work established as a discipline in Britain. He observed, meticulously recorded and published traces of some of the best sites ever to come to light in England. While his overview of the period has inevitably not stood the test of time, his publications remain of great value for the factual information they contain, and for his fine illustrations. Most of his artefact collections also survive, well-documented in spite of the loss of many of his written notes, and these too are important."

"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."

"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."

"and others give us such attractive accounts of the charms of , the quantity of nourishment contained in them, and the desirability of out better appreciation of their excellencies, that we set about making ourselves acquainted with them with hearty good will."

"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."

", 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."

"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."

"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."

"The rusts are highly specialised obligate parasites of s, s and s. The cereal rusts are amon the most destructive pathogens of economic plants ..."

"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."

"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."

"Ability to recognize and identify the commoner s is of some practical interest and importance. ... a few are injurious or even violently poisonous. Of these last, the scarlet Fly Agaric (') ... with a nearly related species, the Death Cap or Death's Angel fungus (') ... with a pale greenish-yellow , common and abundant species about and trees and in woodlands formed by them, are two of the most notorious. The toadstools of both these species, especially those of the latter, contain virulent poisons and if cooked and eaten in the rest condition, are among the most deadly and dangerous poisons known; the Panther Agaric, ', a toadstool with a brown spotted cap, is also common in such woodlands and also poisonous. It is interesting to note that the fleshy caps of these poisonous toadstools are eaten with impunity by s."

"... 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."

"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."

"When potatoes are destroyed by parasitic in the autumn, it does not always happen that the parasite is the dreaded putrefactive fungus of the murrain, named ' Another highly destructive fungus, named ', , is sometimes equally damaging to potatoes with the Peronospora itself. The name Fusisporium refers to the spindle-shaped crescent form of the spores,—fusus a spindle ; Solani of course, refers to the genus to which the potato belongs."

"The mere barbarians, the chippers of rude weapons and tools of stone, who lived in North Britain at the time of the Roman conquest, — the men who had been driven north, ages before the Roman occupation, by from the mainland of Europe, are quite recent as compared with the far-off time when primeval savages lived in what is now Britain. The barbarians who preceded the ancient civilisations of , , and are modern as compared with the remote antiquity of the savages whose bones, weapons, and tools are here described and sketched."

"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."

"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 ."

"' 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."

"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."

"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."

",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."

"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!"

"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."

"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."

"One of Australia's least savoury wildlife episodes was the long slaughter of s for their fur, which continued in some States to the end of the 1920's. In 1924 over 2 million koala pelts were exported, many under the pseudonym of to avoid the odium of publicity."

"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."

"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."

"From time to time I get a query about an unusual waterhen people have seen. It's usually described as dark, with red legs — and a cocked tail that makes it look 'like a little '. Some say they have seen it far from water. Most agree that 'it runs like hell'. Over the years I've had more technical enquiries, but there's not the slightest doubt the bird in question in this case is that peculiarly Australian creation, the black-tailed native-hen ('), a species of small ."

"The lawyer-ornithologist tells of removing a 's nest from a 'well-formed hollow' in a in the outer suburbs of ... Two weeks later he cleared out a 's nest from the hollow. Three weeks later he flushed a from a clutch of three eggs in the same hollow. Clearly the starling is causing losses among native birds ..."

"Watching bouncing, tinkling flocks of es feeding on thistles at once, the American ornithologist Dr guessed he had seen more goldfinches there than even in Europe."

"The late , a Sydney printer and skilled and deservedly respected ornithologist, considered the to breed rarely in in his early days (born in 1904, he died in 1971). But in later years he recorded that some birds were always present and breeding. It seems likely that, in part at least, this change reflected the planting of flowering trees and shrubs in Sydney gardens."

"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."

"An extraordinary diversity of , , bird and fauna had developed from n ancestors. Small, sharp-fanged marsupial 'lions'; cow-sized browsing s; giant kangaroos, even a kangaroo thought by its dentition to have been carnivorous; and huge, 3-metre flightless birds were all present."

"SHINGLE OAK ' South-eastern USA 1786. Infrequent; a few large gardens and collections in all parts."

"WHITE WILLOW ' L. Native all over Britain except in N. W. Scotland, Europe, N. Africa to C. Asia. Common along lowland riversides and valleys; usually less numerous than ."

"In 1994 The Sacred Yew by Anand Chetan and Diana Brueton ... revealed that Alan Mitchell (1992 - 1995 and founder of the of Britain and Ireland), after becoming increasingly interested in potential antiquity himself, (via corresponding with Allen Meredith in the late 1980’s), considered it entirely possible that wild, stunted yew on the storm swept and barren (the westernmost point of the ) could be truly ancient. This was despite their size; with relatively small girths of around 12ft (3.5 m approx.). By 1994 Alan Mitchell had concluded that “There is no theoretical end to this tree, no need for it to die” ..."

"As the value of the in checking the depredations of s (whiteants) does not seem to be generally known, I should like to call your readers’ attention to it through your columns. My first knowledge of it came from. sleeping on the ground when camping in a compound which proved to be riddled with termite runs. Several of us used water-proof ground-sheets that we had prepared from unbleached by sprinkling grated paraffin wax over it and then running this into the fibre by passing a very hot iron very slowly over it. In the morning the undersides of these ground-sheets were found to be covered wih termite mud, but to be unharmed and to have served as a complete protection to everything upon them, whereas all campers without them had had their blankets and some even their pyjamas badly eaten, some of the blankets having been reduced to rags. At that time termites were a constant menace to the books in the , where almost all the shelves were built into the walls. In view of the above experience, therefore, I tried coating the insides of all the book-cases with paraffin wax. A great improvement resulted immediately, though termites quickly found their way through any small gaps that had inadvertently been left. This incidentally made these easy to locate and to fill in, since when all trouble from termites has ceased, the danger having been completely and apparently finally averted, for it is now a number of years since the treatment was effected. And the same method has subsequently been used with equal success in s and boxes elsewhere."

"The , though they continued the building of immense s, concentrated attention on the s or halls, marvellousily developing the carving of their many rows of monolithic pillars, as may be well seen in and ."