Word: dust
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...detente with the insect world for centuries to come. But for the long run, the odds are still heavily in favor of the insect. For, as W.J. Holland's The Moth Book poetically prophesies, it is likely that "when all cities shall have long been dead and crumbled into dust, and all life shall be on the very last verge of extinction on this globe; then, on a bit of lichen ... shall be seated a tiny insect, preening its antennae in the glow of the worn-out sun, representing the sole survival of animal life on this earth?a melancholy...
...variety of sizes. Entomologists estimate that there may be as many as 5 million insect species, of which fewer than a million have been identified and named (there are, for example, more than 300,000 species of beetles alone). Insects range in size from those no larger than a dust particle, and a species of hairy winged beetle that can crawl through the eye of a needle, to the Atlas moth of India, which has a 12-in. wingspan, almost as large as an oriole's. Brian Hocking of Canada's University of Alberta gives an estimate in his book...
...friend was in the archives she wrote me that she came across a bit of a problem with documents and the archivist: "Pretty soon the man comes tottering back wiping cobwebs off a sort of cardboard box with hinges. Inside are piles of documents from the 1400s coated with dust and encased in rubber bands, bits of strings, etc. As you look through them the edges fall off--the archivist says 'eh beh' (so?) and shrugs. I couldn't get them all back in the cardboard box so he came and helped, that is, he jammed them...
...touchdown. If it encounters a large boulder, a deep crevice, too steep a slope or high winds upon landing, the craft could topple over and be forever silenced. It might conceivably even sink, antennas and all, into soft ground or a deep layer of dust...
...defend. One difficulty is the nature of the New Yorkers themselves. Colonel Knox, a Bostonian, has described them as "magnificent in their pride and conceit, which is inimitable; in the want of principle, which is prevalent; in their Toryism, which is insufferable, and for which they must repent in dust and ashes...