Natural Wonders

In the days when I was writing my Natural Histories, we had no knowledge of the Galapagos Islands, and so I was inspired, when I saw a program on the television recently about these islands, to visit the Library and find out more about the wonderful birds, animals, fish, rocks and volcanoes of these regions that were hitherto unknown to me.

I little suspected the wonders that awaited me at the Library.

The Librarian introduced me to the internet and showed me how to seek out information by merely typing a few keywords into a line at the top of the screen. I duly entered the word Galapagos and added for further exactitude the letters BBC.

To my surprise I was led to a site that showed me identical versions of the opening scenes from the television program with alternative musical accompaniments. It seems there had been a competition to choose the most suitable music and both the winner and one of the losers had posted their entries thereon.

From there my eye was led to a sidebar with the intriguing title of "Self Inflating Fish!". I clicked on it and was delighted when I was shown an otter seeking to bite into a puffer fish which immediately inflated itself to the size of a man's head and floated tantalisingly ahead of the otter who was unable to get his teeth into the poisonous fish.

Next I sought to view a site that promised to show me The World's Weirdest Animals ,and indeed, many of these were astonishing, including a half horse, a half crocodile-half man, and a fish with the face of a woman.

But not so astonishing as the creatures on the next site I visited, which was called Plants with Eyes. These plants were clearly shown to have functioning eyes, opening and shutting and in some cases altering size. I cannot but believe this to be a true depiction of a natural marvel of which I was entirely ignorant before. They also go by another name which is Anime.

Gaius Plinius Secundus