mb into every forest canopy, and devise muc o examine tems. Intered a deep cave in Romania t side unknoy-ts andotures—spiders, centipedes, lice—all blind, colorless, and neo science.
turn were feeding on springs.
Our instinct may be to see ty of tracking everytrating,dispiriting, per it can just as unbearablyexciting. e live on a planet t e capacity to surprise. reasoning person could possibly it any other way?
is nearly al arresting in any ramble ttered disciplines ofmodern science is realizing o devote lifetimes to t sumptuously esoteric lines of inquiry. In one of epes on spent fifty years, from 1906 to ly studying a genus of land snails in Polynesia called Partula. Over and over, yearafter year, Crampton measured to tiniest degree—to eigle curves of numberless Partula, compiling ts into fastidiously detailedtables. A single line of text in a Crampton table could represent andcalculation.
Only sliged, and certainly more unexpected, before o speak, Kinsey omologist, and a dogged one att. In one expedition lasting tion of300,000 , alas, recorded.
Somet ion of be many institutions in trequire or are prepared to support specialists in barnacles or Pacific snails. As ed at tural ory Museum in London, I asked Ricey ake his place.
ily at my naiveté. “I’m afraid it’s not as if utessitting on ting to be called in to play. retires or,even more unfortunately, dies, t can bring a stop to t field, sometimes for avery long while.”
“And I suppose t’s udying asingle species of plant, even if it doesn’t produce anyterribly new?”
“Precisely,” o mean it.