Stationary Ark (9781447214229) by Durrell Gerald

Author:Durrell, Gerald [Durrell, Gerald]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781447214229
Publisher: Macmillan
Published: 2010-12-07T06:00:00+00:00

Fables, Facts and Files

‘This beast has a stone in its eye, also called a Yena, which is believed to make a person able to foresee the future if he keeps it under his tongue. It is true that if a Yena walks round any animal three times, the animal cannot move. For this reason they affirm that it has some sort of magic skill about it.

‘In part of Ethiopia it copulates with a lioness, from whence is born a monster known as a Crotote. This can produce the voices of humans in the same way. It is said not to be able to turn its eyes backwards, owing to its rigid backbone, and to be blind in that direction unless it turns round. It has no gums in its mouth. It had one rigid tooth bone all the way along, which shuts like a little box, so that it cannot be blunted by anything.’

T.H. White, The Book of Beasts

‘In much research wild animals are the raw material of zoology and their continued existence for this reason is essential. We still have much to learn about our own evolution, behaviour, diseases and, above all, our own relation to the natural environment. Man has the power to control nature to a certain extent, but equally he is part of nature and in order to understand himself completely, he can only do so in the context of nature and wild animals.’

Caroline Jarvis, The Value of Zoos for Science and Conservation

‘Pythagoras says: “Serpents are created out of the spinal marrow of corpses” . . . And this, if it is to be credited, is all very appropriate: that just as Man’s death was first brought about by a Snake, so by the death of a man a snake should be brought about.’

T.H. White, The Book of Beasts

It is obvious that the human race is still woefully ignorant of how the world works. In many parts of the planet, we are destroying with such ferocious rapidity that there is not even time to give a name to or scientifically to describe what we are destroying, let alone to discover its importance, biologically speaking. It is as well to remember that, when we exterminate a species, we endanger or destroy with it a host of satellite creatures that depend upon it for their existence. When you chop down a tree, you are not just killing a tree, you are destroying the equivalent of a vast and teeming city, because there are so many different forms of creature that live upon it. What we are doing can have far-reaching effects; effects which may not be apparent on the surface; effects which ultimately may rebound upon mankind in an unpleasant way. People comfort themselves with the old saying: ‘You can drive nature out with a pitchfork, but she will return’. The word to note here is ‘pitchfork’. When pitchforks were the most up-to-date weapon in man’s armoury against nature, this was, of course, true; but now you are

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