Natruralists All

Animals may be heading for the high country, but one handsome, little grey desert fox came to visit me this morning. I watched it calmly and purposefully walk across the back yard and up onto my back porch! Perhaps attracted by my cooler. It seemed to look directly at my door knob. It noticed me watching it and made eye contact with me. Then it walked toward me to just under the window at which I sat! We looked at each other full into both eyes.
It walked away with an attitude that seemed to say that it was well past time for me to be speaking and understanding pretty good fox.
It's great that we can interact with these free beings.

I have started reading "Cosmos." What a wonderful human being the Baron was. What wonderful contributions he made to our advancement. He was more than a naturalist, he was a cosmologist. The naturalists of those days are wonderful to read; wonderful, but not easy. I was pleased to get through a couple of works of Darwin in my early teens, but due to my lack of education and experience could not benefit fully.
Steller and Wallace deserve to be included ,with Humboldt and Darwin, among those early giants. Humboldt is still, I believe, included as part of college prep education in Latin America and Europe. Don't here of him being mentioned in High School here. Pity.

Among the natural history sites on line are:
http://www.californiamag.org/ search Museum of Vertebrate Zoology and Grinnell Resurvey Project