y notes bacterium ry pub “ions”—a discovery t o involve rare amounts of luckand devotion andpossibly some oty not specified.
t enougs.tock of to be found, examined, and recordedvery mucruns tists available to do it. take ttle-knoifers. t can survive almostanytions are tougo a compact scabolism, and for better times. In tate, you can drop to boiling er orfreeze t to absolute zero—t is toms give up—and, urned to a more pleasing environment, t 500 species ified(t nobody ely, oget all t to ted amateur, a London clerical ime. t you could ifer expertsin to dinner and not o borroes from the neighbors.
Even sometant and ubiquitous as fungi—and fungi are bottractscomparatively little notice. Fungi are everyo name but a sampling—and t in volumest most of us little suspect. Gatogetypical acre of meado marginal organisms. itfungi tato bligcce’s foot, but alsono yogurts or beers or coget 70,000 species of fungi ified,but it is t t of mycologists ry, making cs and t is o say ivelyinvolved in researc ake it t to be foundto find them.
travel and otion into t t all t big, but at ground level, is actually enormous—enormous enougo be full ofsurprises. t living relative of to exist insubstantial numbers in ts of Zaire—total population is estimated at pery t its existence even suspected until tietury. tless Neakainct for teamof Frencisists in tibet, orm in a remote valley,came across a breed of oric cave draants oniso learn t ty in the wider world.
Some people ter surprises may a us. “A leading Britis,” e t in 1995, “t of giant ground slotand as nesses of the Amazon basin.”
Perly, t named; perly,not slotegorically sayt no sucil every jungly glade igated, and we are a longway from ac.
But even if co tcorners of t be effort enoug is. Life’sextraordinary fecundity is amazing, even gratifying, but also problematic. to survey it all, youurn over every rock, sift tter on every forest floor, sieveunimaginable quantities of sand and dirt, cli