Word: naturalist
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BIRDS, BEASTS AND RELATIVES, by Gerald Durrell. Zoology begins at home, or at least that's the way it seems to Naturalist Durrell, who recalls his boyhood infatuation with animals and his family's strained tolerance of some of the things that followed him into the house...
BIRDS, BEASTS AND RELATIVES, by Gerald Durrell. Zoology begins at home, or at least that's the way it seems to Naturalist Durrell, who recalls his boyhood infatuation with animals and his family's strained tolerance of some of the things that followed him into the house...
Eugene Marais was an Afrikaner best remembered by his countrymen as one of their early poets, but he was also a journalist, self-taught naturalist and morphine addict. Such fame as he enjoyed outside Africa came mainly from the scandal caused when famous Belgian Writer Maurice Maeterlinck stole a lengthy excerpt of Marais's Afrikaans text. The Soul of the White Ant, and published it under his own name. Marais shot himself in 1936. Shortly after, his complete study of white ants, i.e., termites, and a slim, chatty book of reminiscences about baboons were published in Europe. Marais...
Self-Educated Naturalist. Marais's reputation is likely to suffer from the publication. After 54 pages of overheated, condescending preface, Robert Ardrey bumps to a comic conclusion: "Had Marais been enabled to finish his manuscript, polish the rough parts, rethink a few conclusions, add further ideas that had come to him, then beyond all question he would have left us more than we shall find in the following pages." Too true. There is a provocative chapter on the sex life of baboons, whose customs find some resonances in human behavior. Baboons also become addicted to intoxicants, it appears...
Died. Gavin Maxwell, 55, Scottish writer and naturalist, of cancer; in Edinburgh, Scotland. Solitary by disposition, more intrigued by animals than by people, Maxwell mined the world's far reaches for his many books. In Harpoon Venture (1952), he recounted his experiences hunting sharks off the craggy coasts of the Hebrides; travels among Iraqi Arabs led to People of the Reeds (1957). But it was his tender relationship with two otters in the remote Scottish highlands, retold in Ring of Bright Water (1960), that brought him his greatest acclaim. "Stage one on the way to understanding human beings...