White, Mary E. The Nature of Hidden Worlds. Balgowlah, Australia: Reed Books, 1990.
—The Greening of Gondwana. Balgowlah, Australia: Reed Books, 1986.
Wieland, G.R. American Fossil Cycads, 2 vols. Washington, D.C.: Carnegie Institution of Washington, vol. 1: 1906; vol. 2: 1916.
Wilson, Edward O. Biophilia. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1984.
—The Biophilia Hypothesis. Washington, D.C.: Island Press, 1993.
—Naturalist. Washington, D.C.: Island Press, 1993.
Примечания
1
Most of the statues of Easter Island do not, in fact, face the sea; they face away from the sea, toward what used to be the exalted houses of the island. Nor are the statues eyeless – on the contrary, they originally had startling, brilliant eyes made of white coral, with irises of red volcanic tuff or obsidian; this was only discovered in 1978. But my children’s encyclopedia adhered to the myth of the blind, eyeless giants staring hopelessly out to sea – a myth which seems to have had its origin, through many tellings and retellings, in some of the early explorers’ accounts, and in the paintings of William Hodges, who travelled to Easter Island with Captain Cook in the 1770s.
2
Humboldt first described the enormous dragon tree, very briefly, in a postscript to a letter written in June 1799 from Teneriffe:
In the district of Orotava there is a dragon-tree measuring forty-five feet in circumference…Four centuries ago the girth was as great as it is now.
In his Personal Narrative, written some years later, he devoted three paragraphs to the tree, and speculated about its origin:
It has never been found in a wild state on the continent of Africa. The East Indies is its real country. How has this tree been transplanted to Teneriffe, where it is by no means common?
Later still, in his ‘Physiognomy of Plants’ (collected, with other essays, in Views of Nature ) he devoted nine entire pages to ‘The Colossal Dragon-Tree of Orotava,’ his original observations now expanded to a whole essay of rich and spreading associations and speculations:
This colossal dragon-tree, Dracaena draco, stands in the garden of M. Franqui, in the little town of Orotava…one of the most charming spots in the world. In June 1799, when we ascended the peak of Teneriffe, we found that this enormous tree measured 48 feet in circumference…When we remember that the dragon-tree is everywhere of very slow growth, we may conclude that the one at Orotava is of extreme antiquity.
He suggests an age of about six thousand years for the tree, which would make it ‘coeval with the builders of the Pyramids…and place its birth…in an epoch when the Southern Cross was still visible in Northern Germany.’ But despite its vast age, the tree still bore, he remarks, ‘the blossom and fruit of perpetual youth.’
Humboldt’s Personal Narrative was a great favorite of Darwin’s. ‘I will never be easy,’ he wrote to his sister Caroline, ‘till I see the peak of Teneriffe and the great Dragon tree.’ He looked forward eagerly to visiting Teneriffe, and was bitterly disappointed when he was not permitted to land there, because of a quarantine. He did, however, take the Personal Narrative with him on the Beagle (along with Lyell’s Principles of Geology ), and when he was able to retrace some of Humboldt’s travels in South America, his enthusiasm knew no bounds. ‘I formerly admired Humboldt,’ he wrote. ‘Now I almost adore him.’
3
Remarkable specializations and evolutions may occur not only on islands, but in every sort of special and cut-off environment. Thus a unique stingless jellyfish was recently discovered in an enclosed saltwater lake in the interior of Eil Malk, one of the islands of Palau, as Nancy Barbour describes:
The jellyfish in the lake are members of the genus Mastigias, a jellyfish commonly found in the Palau Lagoon whose powerful stinging tentacles are used for protection and for capturing planktonic prey. It is believed that the ancestors of these Mastigias jellyfish became trapped in the lake millions of years ago when volcanic forces uplifted Palau’s submerged reefs, transforming deep pockets in the reefs into landlocked saltwater lakes. Because there was little food and few predators in the lake, their long, clublike tentacles gradually evolved into stubby appendages unable to sting, and the jellyfish came to rely on the symbiotic algae living within their tissues for nutrients. The algae capture energy from the sun and transform it into food for the jellyfish. In turn, the jellyfish swim near the surface during the day to ensure that the algae receive enough sunlight for photosynthesis to occur…Every morning the school of jellyfish, estimated at more than 1.6 million, migrates across the lake to the opposite shore, each jellyfish rotating counter-clockwise so that the algae on all sides of its bell receive equal sunlight. In the afternoon the jellyfish turn and swim back across the lake. At night they descend to the lake’s middle layer, where they absorb the nitrogen that fertilizes their algae.
4
‘I had been lying on a sunny bank,’ Darwin wrote of his travels in Australia, ‘reflecting on the strange character of the animals of this country as compared to the rest of the World.’ He was thinking here of marsupials as opposed to placental animals; they were so different, he felt, that
…an unbeliever in everything beyond his own reason might exclaim, ‘Surely two distinct Creators must have been at work.’
Then his attention was caught by a giant ant-lion in its conical pitfall, flicking up jets of sand, making little avalanches, so that small ants slid into its pit, exactly like ant-lions he had seen in Europe:
Would any two workmen ever hit on so beautiful, so simple, and yet so artificial a contrivance? It cannot be thought so. The one hand has surely worked throughout the universe.
5
Frances Futterman also describes her vision in very positive terms:
Words like ‘achromatopsia’ dwell only on what we lack. They give no sense of what we have, the sort of worlds we appreciate or make for ourselves. I find twilight a magical time – there are no harsh contrasts, my visual field expands, my acuity is suddenly improved. Many of my best experiences have come at twilight, or in moonlight – I have toured Yosemite under the full moon, and one achromatope I know worked as a nighttime guide there; some of my happiest memories are of lying on my back among the giant redwood trees, looking up at the stars.
As a kid I used to chase lightning bugs on warm summer nights; and I loved going to the amusement park, with all the flashing neon lights and the darkened fun house – I was never afraid of that. I love grand old movie theaters, with their ornate interiors, and outdoor theaters. During the holiday season, I like to look at all the twinkling lights decorating store windows and trees.
6