Includes bibliographical references (pages 513-524) and index.
Summary
A collection of thirty-five essays--representing the best of the column "This View of Life" from "Natural History" magazine--focuses on the themes of evolution and of the innumerable oddities of nature.
Contents
George Canning's left buttock and the origin of species -- Grimm's greatest tale -- The creation myths of Cooperstown -- The panda's thumb of technology -- Bully for brontosaurus -- The dinosaur rip-off -- Of kiwi eggs and the Liberty Bell -- Male nipples and clitoral ripples -- Not necessarily a wing -- The case of the creeping fox terrier clone -- Life's little joke -- The chain of reason versus the chain of thumbs -- Madame Jeanette -- Red wings in the susnset -- Petrus camper's angle -- Literary bias on the slippery slope -- Glow, big glowworm -- To be a platypus -- Bligh's bounty -- Here goes nothing -- In a jumbled drawer -- Kropotkin was no crackpot -- Fleeming Jenkin revisited -- The passion of Antoine Lavoisier -- The godfather of disaster -- Knight takes Bishop? -- Genesis and geology -- William Jennigs Bryan's last campaign -- An essay on a pig roast -- Justice Scalia's misunderstanding -- The streak of streaks -- The median isn't the message -- The ant and the plant -- The face of Miranda -- The horn of Triton.
