Word: mothing
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...death in 1924, at 91, the experiment was inherited by colleagues at Michigan State College (now University), who had been bequeathed a map showing where the remaining bottles were buried. By 1960 only three varieties of seed still grew. A decade later, one hardy weed survived: Verbascum blattaria or moth mullein...
...unearthed this year were planted, as usual, in soil sterilized by steam. But at first nothing happened. Had the century-old seeds finally expired? No. After several weeks the first seedling emerged; within five months 29 seeds had germinated. Six of the seedlings died. Of the survivors, 21 are moth mullein, one is another type of Verbascum and the last a variety of the Malva species that had not sprouted since...
...same cannot be said of the caterpillars. New Hampshire has been eaten by caterpillars, most of them the larval form of the gypsy moth. Properly, these caterpillars, bristly brown and yellow chaps with red and blue spots, belong down south in Massachusetts, where for some years they have chewed the leaves from increasingly large patches of woodland. Reports of this munching have been received with equanimity in New Hampshire, whose yeomen tend to take the view that something is always chewing on Massachusetts. If there is anything left to chew there after crooked paving contractors and easy-had tax assessors...
...thus far is not of board feet lost to lumbermen. It is of seemliness outraged. The damned bugs belong down in Lowell or Peabody, or out on the Cape eating clam rolls. LIVE FREE OR DIE, as our pugnacious license plate motto recommends, but if you are a gypsy moth, do it some place else...
...what exactly are real people? Do they eat meatloaf and shop at K-Mart or wear moth-eaten sweaters and hum Haydn in the shower? And what is a real situation? A Saskatchewan classroom during the Depression can appear as real as a Chicago classroom today and a Canadian bully can be just as real as an American hood. So what gives both these films the accessible quality of coffee-table books, full of colorful portraits, sensible prose and a handful of good chuckles...