“An inordinate fondness for beetles.” So J.B.S. Haldane famously quipped when asked what he thought could be deduced about God through the study of natural history. He had a point. There are 380,000 (give or take) species presently known to science – with untold thousands, perhaps tens of thousands, still undiscovered and not yet described.
For his most recent Sunday Book Review, Mark shows his readers his Aurelian side.No, not the sad, Berlin-bound Aurelian as depicted in Nabokov’s short story of that name; the joyous Aurelian, as in the great tradition of butterfly enthusiasts.
When it comes to the literature of natural history, there are certain words that when found in the title of a book automatically draw attention to it – words such as “invertebrates,” “medically important,” and “venomous.” So when all of these are found in the title of one single book, well… how could any self-respecting naturalist possibly resist the desire to learn more about it?
On my recent travels in England, just before making the pilgrimage to the BirdFair, I had the great good fortune of exploring the area around Radley Lakes with Jo Cartmell in search of Water Voles – or at least signs thereof. As the day warmed, the butterflies and dragonflies became more active, culminating in the opportunity to snap a photo (with merely my mobile phone camera, no less) of this exquisite Common Darter, Sympetrum striolatum, male as it basked on a barbed wire fence along the path.