29 Quotes About Natural-history

Now in her hands, the final copy- every brushstroke, every carefully thought-out color, every word of the natural histories, printed in a book. There were also drawings of the creatures who live inside- how they eat, how they move, how they mate- because people forget about creatures who live in shells.She touched the pages and remembered each shell and the story of finding it, where it lay on the beach, the season, the sunrise. A family album.

There was a time—until very recently in the scheme of things—when there were no wild animals, because every animal was wild; and humans were few. Animals, and animal presence over us and around us. Over every horizon, animals. Their skins clothing our skins, their fats in our lamps, their bladders to carry water, meat when we could get it.

We reached the old wolf in time to watch a fierce green fire dying in her eyes

The materially reconstructed animal is immune to pain, free from our ability to inflict upon it (further) mental or physical cruelty or violence. Any guilt or concern about the animal's welfare - its confinement, its isolation from its own kind's social structures, and the enforced company of humans - troubles us no longer; the animal is "at rest," while simultaneously prepared to be continually at our behest. Modeled in glass, its eyes are incapable of any disturbingly accusatory stare.

A museum is a place where nothing was lost, just rediscovered…

I wonder if we are seeing a return to the object in the science-based museum. Since any visitor can go to a film like Jurassic Park and see dinosaurs reawakened more graphically than any museum could emulate, maybe a museum should be the place to have an encounter with the bony truth. Maybe some children have overdosed on simulations on their computers at home and just want to see something solid--a fact of life.

Catch on fire with enthusiasm, and people will come for miles to watch you burn

I believe in science, Mr. Gilbert. But one of my first loves was natural history. The earth is ancient and it is vast and there is much that we do not yet comprehend. I refuse to accept that science and magic are opposed; they are both valid attempts to understand the way our world works.

A tissue is evidently an enduring thing. It's functional and structural conditions become modified from moment to moment. Time is really the fourth dimension of living organisms. It enters as part into the constitution of a tissue. Cell colonies, or organs, are events which progressively unfold themselves. They must be studied like history.