Alpine Meadow

Spring is coming! Indeed in selected places, like here in the Botanic Gardens, it is already well on its way!

Undaunted Perserverance

... one would suppose that the faculty of adding anything whatever to natural knowledge was one possessed by extremely few persons. I believe, on the contrary, that any man possessed of average ability and somewhat more than average perseverance, is capable, if he will, of doing good original scientific work.

Any hardworking and commonly intelligent man, who likes his profession, will make a good soldier, or lawyer, or doctor, though that combination of powers which makes the great general, or the great jurist, or the great physician, is given to but few. So it is with the pursuit of Science: assuredly not every one of her followers, very probably not one among us now present, will become a Linnaeus, or a Cuvier, or an Agassiz.

It may not be given to any of us to make some brilliant discovery, or to first expound some illuminating generalization; but we can, each and all, if we will, do good and valuable work in elucidating the details of various branches of knowledge.

All that is needed for such work, besides some leisure, intelligence, and common-sense (and the more of each the better), is undaunted perseverance and absolute truthfulness; a perseverance unabated by failure after failure, and a truthfulness incapable of the least perversion (either by way of omission or commission) in the description of an observation or of an experiment, or of the least reluctance to acknowledge an error once it is found to have been made.

Moreover, this love of truth must extend to a constant searching and inquisition of the mind, with the perpetual endeavour to keep inferences from observation or experiment unbiased, so far as may be, by natural predilections or favourite theories.

Perfect success in such an endeavour is, perhaps, unattainable, but the scientific worker must ever strive after it; theories are necessary to guide and systematize his work, and to lead to its prosecution in new directions, but they must be servants, and not masters.

Quotation: Henry Newell Martin (1848-1896), student of Thomas Henry Huxley who was inaugural Professor of Physiology at Johns Hopkins University. Inaugural Address, The Study & Teaching of Biology. 1876.

Impatient of Drudgery

I think it more befitting to my present position however, that I should address myself especially to younger students of natural science, with a view to pointing out some of the mistakes which they perhaps are particularly liable to fall into, mistakes which no doubt further study would enable them to correct for themselves, but which often remain uncorrected very much because the studies are so fitfully pursued that it is only when some circumstance arouses a public interest in scientific subjects that their attention is drawn to them again. It may appear but a commonplace observation when I say that one of the first things to be guarded against is impatience of the drudgery needful to master even the alphabet of almost any branch of science.

I mean more by this than that there is no royal road to learning, and my meaning extends to this, namely, that there is a great temptation to forsake the steady pursuit of knowledge along the more tedious pathways of careful observation and well-considered induction for the more attractive highways of fashionable theory. I am not alluding now to those whose chief object is to get a reputation for the possession of scientific knowledge careless as to the basis upon which that reputation may rest.

It may suffice for such to read a review of them, to plunge hotly into a discussion probably with far more rashness of assertion than they dare to whom the subject had been long familiar. But I speak rather of this danger as besetting those who are sincere in their desire to get to the root of matters. It is a seductive error. It seems so much easier to discuss the merits of a theory than to plod along with the accumulation of facts, forgetting that we are not qualified to judge of the merits of a theory until we have a wide knowledge of the facts upon which it is based.

Presidential Address, by Right Reverend Bishop Samuel Tarratt Nevill, to the Otago Institute, 17 January 1878. Transactions and Proceeding of the New Zealand Institute. Volume 10, pp562-566

By-the-left, Stand!

Standing on the rails of the round bit of the railing, gives these gulls a bit more space from passers-by.

It even allowed a couple of them to tuck their beaks under their wings for a bit of shut-eye.

But there's nontheless a kind of uniformity about these smart looking gulls - they are standing in formation with their best foot forward!

Lichen Landscape

I have tried before to identify New Zealand lichens, but there is no handy identification guide. David Galloway's Lichen Flora of New Zealand, is way too technical for limited understanding, so I guess we'll just have to admire these as lichen-landscapes!

However, I am reasonably confident that this is Teloschistea chrysophthalmus. Comparing another photograph on the Forest lichens website. Of course, matching photos is probably a silly way to identify things, but never mind. And of course, Chryso- means golden coloured.

The grey 'spread-out' foliose form is what I habitually call Parmelia, which in a NZ context probably means its in the Parmeliaceae family, rather than the genus per se.

The brown bumps - are tree trunk scars - typical of most Prunus species, but particularly noticeable on this ornamental flowering cherry-tree. It was here when we moved into the house, so we have no idea what variety it is. Dunedin has plenty of these pink cherry trees, in public spaces as well as private gardens. Spring is early this year, and already there are three or four blooms. Elsewhere in town some of the early flowering pink rhododendrons are in flower, leastways those that are sited in choice sunny positions.

Progress

In throwing together my remarks on the Natural History of Creation, I shall propose to myself two or three objectives, to which I shall endeavour as much as possible to limit your attention.

In the first place, one object I have in view will be to show that in the History of Creation, the history of all that has been created, whether of the mineral, the vegetable, or the animal kingdom, there has been PROGRESS; - that all creation has commenced in comparatively simple forms, and that these have gradually become more complicated. In the second place, I wish to point out that this progress of creation in the three kingdoms of nature has had prospectively in view the welfare and the happiness of ma. In the third place, I shall endeavour to point out to you that man’s spiritual nature or reason is obedient to the same law of progress, or may be brought under and viewed from the idea of progress.

What we mean by progress, as applied to Natural History, is something different from the ordinary use of the term. It involves two ideas: the idea first of time – of a series of events, taking place in time; and secondly, the idea of the relation of certain imperfect creations, organisms, beings, to some more perfect – ideal type.

Quotation from: The Natural History of Creation By Edwin Lankester, 1848

Lunctime

One lunch-time we went to have our sandwiches in a handy carpark with a view! The local red-billed gulls clearly know the spot well. The leader of the pack calls in others ...

one of whom dances on our car bonnet. In the background can be seen part of the latest of Dunedin's public sculptures - a row of over-sized molars.

And a second perches on the roof of another car, whose occupant was also having their lunch.

It didn't take long for the canny gulls to realise sandwiches were for human consumption only, so they flew off in disgust.