Word: naturalists
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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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...
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...
...Naturalist Gerald Durrell's boyhood memoir, My Family and Other Animals, delighted nearly everyone except his family. The book started as a report on the beginning of young Gerald's lifelong fascination with the animal world. The family, however, kept getting in the way. "It was only with the greatest difficulty," Durrell confessed, "and by exercising considerable cunning, that I managed to retain a few pages here and there which I could devote exclusively to animals." Then, when it was finished, his relatives ragged him for leaving out all the really funny family stories. Obligingly, Durrell...
...retired professor asked about Roman metal workers who wore face masks made from goats' bladders to protect themselves from dust and lead fumes (Roman Naturalist Pliny was the source). Three readers were baffled by the word glitch in one of our moon stories (it is a modernized term for World War II's famed gremlin); another was having trouble finding the word aelurophile (it is a variant of ailurophile, meaning lover of cats). Ofttimes the department is called upon to settle arguments-last year two college roommates quibbled about who makes more money, pro footballers or auto racers...
...measure of Woiwode's worldly wisdom. He throws off bit characters-an Indian clerk in the general store, an old farmer down the road -with the sort of spendthrift brilliance that measures an abundant talent. He handles those woods with the care and exactness of a naturalist. In short, at 27, he is already a novelist one can trust. Past blitheness, but not up to bitterness, Woiwode treats life (and death) with unstinting tenderness. He knows the price of love-and he knows the cost of living without...