CONRAD GESNER AND THE REVEREND EDWARD TOPSELL1
CONRAD GESNER
I learn from Topsell’s Gesner, whose authority appears to be
Albertus, that the following is the way in which the hedgehog
collects and carries home his apples. He says,—
His meat is apples, worms, or grapes: when he findeth
apples or grapes on the earth, he rolleth himself upon
them, until he have filled all his prickles, and then
carrieth them home to his den, never bearing above one
in his mouth; and if it fortune that one of them fall
off by the way, he likewise shaketh off all the residue,
and walloweth upon them afresh, until they be all
settled upon his back again. So, forth he goeth, making
a noise like a cart-wheel; and if he have any young ones
in his nest, they pull off his load wherewithal he is
loaded, eating thereof what they please, and laying up
the residue for the time to come.
1. Also Konrad Gessner, Conrad Geßner, Conrad von Gesner, and Conradus Gesnerus.
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“NARRATIVE HISTORY” AMOUNTS TO FABULATION,
THE REAL STUFF BEING MERE CHRONOLOGY
“Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project:
Conrad Gesner and the Reverend Edward Topsell
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A WEEK: But, above all, there is wanting genius. Our books of
science, as they improve in accuracy, are in danger of losing the
freshness and vigor and readiness to appreciate the real laws of
Nature, which is a marked merit in the ofttimes false theories of
the ancients. I am attracted by the slight pride and satisfaction,
the emphatic and even exaggerated style in which some of the older
naturalists speak of the operations of Nature, though they are
better qualified to appreciate than to discriminate the facts.
Their assertions are not without value when disproved. If they
are not facts, they are suggestions for Nature herself to
act upon. “The Greeks,” says Gesner, “had a common proverb
() a sleeping hare, for a dissembler or counterfeit;
because the hare sees when she sleeps; for this is an admirable
and rare work of Nature, that all the residue of her bodily parts
take their rest, but the eye standeth continually sentinel.”
CONRAD GESNER
JAMES RENNIE
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1516
March 26, Wednesday (Old Style): Conrad Gesner was born in Zürich, son of a furrier.
NOBODY COULD GUESS WHAT WOULD HAPPEN NEXT
“Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project:
Conrad Gesner and the Reverend Edward Topsell
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1531
The 2d Kappelerkriege, or civil war of religion between Protestant Zürich and the Catholic cantons of
Switzerland led by Lucerne. The Reverend Zwingli and the father of Conrad Gesner were killed at the Battle
of Kappel. The Forest Cantons were defeated.
LIFE IS LIVED FORWARD BUT UNDERSTOOD BACKWARD?
— NO, THAT’S GIVING TOO MUCH TO THE HISTORIAN’S STORIES.
LIFE ISN’T TO BE UNDERSTOOD EITHER FORWARD OR BACKWARD.
“Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project:
Conrad Gesner and the Reverend Edward Topsell
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1532
In this year and the following one, Conrad Gesner would be studying at the universities of Strassburg and
Bourges.
THE FUTURE IS MOST READILY PREDICTED IN RETROSPECT
“Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project:
Conrad Gesner and the Reverend Edward Topsell
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1535
Conrad Gesner was driven by religious unrest from Paris back to his home town, Zürich.
THE FUTURE CAN BE EASILY PREDICTED IN RETROSPECT
“Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project:
Conrad Gesner and the Reverend Edward Topsell
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1536
Conrad Gesner studied at Basel.
The Reverend John Calvin of Geneva, Switzerland was pretty much an establishment type of guy:
It is impossible to resist the magistrate without,
at the same time, resisting God himself.
Chronological observations of America
The Puritan-Church policy began now in Geneva.
BY John Josselyn Gent.
to the year of Christ 1673.
From the year of the World
In this year he wrote CHRISTAINAE RELIGIONIS INSTITUTIO.
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Martin Luther’s TABLE TALK was interesting, considering that once upon a time while he happened to be away,
four people would happen to be slowly smoked to death as witches in the cathedral square of his German town,
Wittenberg:
“I should have no compassion on these witches. I would
burn all of them.... Witchcraft is the Devil’s own
proper work.”
WHAT I’M WRITING IS TRUE BUT NEVER MIND
YOU CAN ALWAYS LIE TO YOURSELF
“Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project:
Conrad Gesner and the Reverend Edward Topsell
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1537
Conrad Gesner became the professor of Greek at a new academy in Lausanne.
CHANGE IS ETERNITY, STASIS A FIGMENT
“Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project:
Conrad Gesner and the Reverend Edward Topsell
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1540
During this year and the following one Conrad Gesner visited the medical university of Montpellier.
Dietrich Dorsten’s BOTANICON.
BOTANIZING
DO I HAVE YOUR ATTENTION? GOOD.
“Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project:
Conrad Gesner and the Reverend Edward Topsell
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1541
The leadership of the Reverend John Calvin in Geneva, Switzerland began at this point and would continue
until 1564.
In Germany, Herr Professor Martin Luther wrote the hymn “Lord Keep us Steadfast in Thy Word.” His health
was particularly bad, as an ulcer on his leg had reopened and he was suffering from throat and ear infections,
as well as experiencing continuing problems with kidneystones, arthritis, heart difficulties — and of course
digestive disorders. The Professor’s writing was on occasion becoming even pushily vulgar.
Conrad Gesner took the degree of doctor of medicine at Basel. Dr. Conradus Gesnerus would establish a
medical practice in Zürich, meanwhile lecturing in physics at the Carolinum (precursor of the University of
Zürich). This year saw the publication of his ENCHIRIDION HISTORIAE PLANTARUM. In the prefix to his LIBELLUS
DE LACTE ET OPERIBUS LACTARIIS, Gesner described for the benefit of a friend, J. Vogel of Glarus, the wonders
to be found among the mountains, below the snow line. The author declared an intention to climb at least one
mountain per summer, not only to collect botanical specimens but also for bodily exercise.
King Henry VIII had himself declared, by the English barons living on their estates in Ireland, as the King of
Ireland rather than merely their feudal lord. Anointing himself as the head of the Church of Ireland, in this year
he would demand that the Irish renounce their Catholicism.
Let’s do it my way.
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1542
Conrad Gesner’s CATALOGUS PLANTARUM.
Leonhart Fuchs’s DE HISTORIA STIRPIUM COMMENTARII included this illustration of the poppy among its
roughly 500 plant species.
By the following year he would publish also a German version, NEW KREÜTERBUCH. Illustrations for his
herbals were based on studies of living plants, rather than on the simplified images that had become common
in various scribed editions of the Apuleius herbal. The text, however, was taken essentially from Dioscorides.
Much later, the plant genus Fuchsia would be named in his honor.
PLANTS
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1545
The BIBLE was published in Low German — Herr Professor Martin Luther’s final revision of his HIGH
GERMAN BIBLE first published in 1534.
From this year until 1563, there would be a Roman Catholic council (reunion of bishops) in session at Trent,
Italy, that would be confirming the doctrines which the Catholic church would be using in order to oppose
Protestantism. Lucerne, the only major city of the Swiss Confederacy to remain Catholic, would play a leading
role in this “Counter-Reformation.”
Conrad Gesner’s BIBLIOTHECA UNIVERSALIS, which purported to list by author and title every treatise ever
published in Latin, Greek or Hebrew.
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1548
Conrad Gesner’s PANDECTARIUM SIVE PARTITIONUM UNIVERSALIUM CONRADI GESNERI LIGURINI LIBRI XXI
(which as actually published would sum to 19 volumes rather than 21).
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1549
Conrad Gesner published a theological encyclopaedia.
Between this year and 1560, approximately 6,000 of the French Protestant group contemptuously referred to
by the French Catholics as les Huguenots, worthless ones,2 would flee to Geneva to escape religious
persecution — but the mass migrations out of France were yet to come.
2. The term Huguenot may have originated in the same manner in which the terms “Quaker” and “Sioux” originated, as a gesture
of contempt expressed by hostile opponents. We know that for a time, in Poitou, the French Protestants were referred to by the
orthodox as Fribours, which was the term used for a counterfeit coin then in circulation, of debased metal. One of the possibilities
is therefore that in the argot of the time, a Huguenot may have been a small coin of little worth. The matter is not well documented.
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1551
A landmark in text modularization: the first division of Biblical materials into verses, by Robert Estienne I
in Geneva.
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In Zürich, Conrad Gesner began issuing the five volumes of his HISTORIAE ANIMALIUM (quadrupeds, birds,
fishes), which would not be complete until 1558.
Dr. Pierre Belon’s L’HISTOIRE NATURELLE DES ÉSTRANGES POISSONS MARINS, AVEC LA VRAIE PEINCTVRE &
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DESCRIPTION DU DAULPHIN,
& DE PLUSIEURS AUTRES DE SON ESPECE (Paris: Chaudiere).
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1555
Conrad Gesner’s MITHRIDATES DE DIFFERENTIS LINGUIS, an account of about 130 known languages providing
the Lord’s Prayer in 22 of them. This author also provided a narrative DESCRIPTIO MONTIS FRACTI SIVE MONTIS
PILATI about his excursion to the Gnepfstein, which at an exceedingly impressive elevation of 1,920 meters is
the smallest prominence of the Pilatus chain of mountains.
Olaus Magnus, the exiled Catholic archbishop of Uppsala, Sweden, alleged that off the coast of Norway sailors
had often reported having seen a “Serpent ... of vast magnitude, namely 200 feet long, and moreover 20 foot
thick.” He reported that the sailors claimed “he puts up his head on high like a pillar.”
SEA SERPENT SIGHTINGS
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1556
Conrad Gesner’s edition of the works of Claudius Aelianus.
Queen Mary chartered the Stationers’ Company, a guild of London printers with a monopoly over the books
they published. Henceforth, as an extension of the state power of censorship under the reinstated heresy laws,
all books were to be submitted for official approval and were to be entered on this company’s register. Any
printing which had not received such prior governmental authorization, or any failure to so register with the
Stationers’ Company (this would primarily be non-Roman Catholic publication, but by no means exclusively),
was to henceforth be subject to such punishment as the Court of Star Chamber should decree.
The Oundle grammar school was founded.
John Heywood’s poem “Spider & flie” was printed by T. Powell.
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1558
In Zürich, the 4th volume of Conrad Gesner’s HISTORIAE ANIMALIUM (quadrupeds, birds, fishes; a 5th volume,
on snakes, would eventually follow).
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1564
Conrad Gesner, the 1st chap to draw a picture of a pencil, was in this year granted a title of nobility, and became
Conrad von Gesner.3
Graphite came to be used as a marker, when the purest deposit ever found was revealed near Borrowdale, in
Cumberland in the Lake District of north-western England, when an oak fell during a storm. Shepherds found
the rough chunks useful to mark their flocks, but the material was messy to handle. That problem would be
addressed by cutting the material into small square-cornered sticks and wrapping them in string to make them
easier to hold, and then people would begin to glue the graphite sticks into grooves cut in small wands of wood.
The material would be referred to as “plumbago” (imitation lead). The first handmade pencils, in the form that
we know today are the “Crayons d’Angleterre,” would be made from Borrowdale graphite.
3. Shades of Escher! —One may suppose that Von Gesner may have used a pencil at least to create the 1st draft of this woodcut
(which has above been enhanced somewhat, for purposes of clarity).
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Among the users of the pencil would be a chap name of William Shakespeare who would be known on
occasion to scribble quickly in order to pay the rent. In this year, we suspect, he was born. For some time he
wouldn’t look very much like this, if he ever looked like this at all (the representation is fanciful, and based
upon approximately nothing):
We have about five hard facts about Shakespeare’s life, such as that he rented his London room from a
Huguenot — which means that there are only about a couple of facts left after this. But who’s counting?
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1565
Antwerp doctor Samuel Quicchelberg published a description of the curiosity cabinet of Hans Jacob Fugger,
which included items from the animal, vegetable, and mineral world.
THE SCIENCE OF 1565
In DE OMNI RERUM FOSSILIUM GENERE, GEMMIS, LAPIDIBUS, METALLIS, ET HUIUSMODI... (TREATISE ON FOSSIL
OBJECTS), Conrad von Gesner of Zürich provided us with the earliest surviving description of a pencil,
accompanied with a woodcut prepared by himself, depicting a wooden tube holding a piece of graphite.
Since the object derived its name from Middle English and Middle French words meaning “brush,” it was
presumably of a round cross-section. Some scholars believe William Shakespeare did considerable play
drafting with a “Gesner pencil” — although of course not while he was “Shakespeare in Love” on camera stage
center with a considerably more photogenic inky quill.
PALEONTOLOGY
Sweden began its own papermaking, at Norrström.
December 13, Thursday (Old Style): His title of nobility availing him not, or at least not much, Conrad von Gesner
died of the plague. A genus of flowering plants would in his honor be designated as the Gesneria
(Gesneriaceae).
PLANTS
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1572
Edward Topsell was baptized in Sevenoaks, Kent. The infant may have looked something like this although
with not yet so much hair or so many teeth:
(Or, maybe not.)
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1574
J. Simler re-edited Conrad Gesner’s BIBLIOTHECA UNIVERSALIS.
This map was created by Abraham Ortelius:
CARTOGRAPHY
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1587
In Zürich, the 5th and final volume of Conrad Gesner’s HISTORIAE ANIMALIUM, on snakes.
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1591
John Fletcher appears to have entered Corpus Christi College of Cambridge University at the age of 11, to
prepare for a career in the church.
Giles Fletcher the Elder’s OF THE RUSSE COMMON WEALTH. OR, MANER OF GOUERNEMENT OF THE RUSSE
EMPEROUR, (COMMONLY CALLED THE EMPEROUR OF MOSKOUIA) WITH THE MANNERS, AND FASHIONS OF THE
PEOPLE OF THAT COUNTREY (London).
In this year or the following one, probably, Edward Topsell received a Bachelor’s degree from Christ College
of Cambridge University.
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1593
John Brereton received the Bachelor’s degree from Gonville & Caius College of Cambridge University.
At some point in about this timeframe, Edward Topsell received the Master’s degree from Christ College of
Cambridge University.
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1596
The Reverend Edward Topsell’s THE REWARD OF RELIGION. He became the 1st rector of East Hoathly.
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1599
The Reverend Edward Topsell’s TIME’S LAMENTATION.
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1604
The Reverend Edward Topsell became the perpetual curate of St. Botolph’s in Aldersgate.
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1607
The Reverend Edward Topsell’s THE HISTORIE OF FOURE-FOOTED BEASTES, fabricated out of bits and pieces
of Albertus and of Conrad Gesner’s HISTORIA ANIMALIUM. The intent of this publication was to make evident
to the reader that nonhuman animals were not only for the killing and eating, but had in addition three sacred
functions: they were intended for sacrifice, they were intended for visions, and they were intended for reproof
and instruction.
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1608
The Reverend Edward Topsell’s THE HISTORIE OF SERPENTS.
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1625
Edward Topsell died at the age of 53.
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1658
The Reverend Edward Topsell’s THE HISTORIE OF FOURE-FOOTED BEASTES (1607) and THE HISTORIE OF
SERPENTS (1608) were reprinted together in a total of 1,100 pages as THE HISTORY OF FOUR-FOOTED BEASTS
AND SERPENTS.
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1751
In Nürnberg, Volume I of Conrad Gesner’s botanical manuscripts.
BOTANIZING
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1771
The Reverend Gilbert White of Selborne discontinued the GARDEN KALENDAR which he had maintained since
1751, in favor of the format of Daines Barrington’s THE NATURALIST’S JOURNAL.4
In Nürnberg, Volume II of Conrad Gesner’s botanical manuscripts.
BOTANIZING
Luigi Galvani of Bologna recorded “animal” electricity.
THE SCIENCE OF 1771
The Reverend Joseph Priestley discovered that a plant could produce enough breathable air to sustain a mouse
plus keep a candle burning. Though he described this in different terms, he had discovered oxygen.
In Gailenreuth Cave in Germany, Father Johann Esper found human bones beneath those of extinct animals.
He concluded that the bones had gotten underneath by some sort of happenstance, the alternative being
unthinkable — and this was an opinion with which Cuvier would concur.
PALEONTOLOGY
4. See the extracts edited by Walter Johnson, published in 1931 and reprinted in 1970.
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1859
February 6, Sunday: Henry Thoreau checked out, from Harvard Library, Edward Topsell’s THE HISTORIE OF FOUREFOOTED BEASTES ... (London, 1607, reprinted 1658 as THE HISTORY OF FOUR-FOOTED BEASTS AND SERPENTS
...).
He checked out an unidentified volume numbered either “31.35” or “31:36,” by Ælian (170-235CE).5
5. Claudius Ælianus’s chief preserved works are an edition by Jacobs printed in 1832 of ON THE NATURE OF ANIMALS, CURIOUS
AND INTERESTING STORIES OF ANIMAL LIFE, FREQUENTLY USED TO CONVEY MORAL LESSONS (DE NATURA ANIMALIUM), and an
edition by Lunemann printed in 1811 of VARIOUS HISTORY (VARIU HISTORIA). Since, in the following month of April, Thoreau
would be checking out the Latin edition of DE NATURA ANIMALIUM LIBRI XVII. CUM ANIMADVERSIONIBUS C. GESNERI ET
D.W. TRILLERI of Schneider, probably it would have been the English translation of this by Jacobs that initially he had been
consulting.
CONRAD GESNER
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Thoreau also checked out Pierre Belon de Mans’s L’HISTOIRE DE LA NATURE DES OYSEAUX, AVEC LEURS
DESCRIPTIONS (Paris: G. Corrozet, 1555).6
April 9, Saturday: Henry Thoreau checked out, from Harvard Library, the Schneider edition, issued in Leipzig in 1784,
of Claudius Ælianus (170-235CE)’s DE NATURA ANIMALIUM LIBRI XVII. CUM ANIMADVERSIONIBUS C. GESNERI
ET D.W. TRILLERI.
CONRAD GESNER
http://www.flyfishinghistory.com/aelian_westwood_trans.htm
April 9. P. M.–To Goose Pond.
The wind is as strong, and yet colder, being more from the north, than before. Through, I think, all this windy
weather, or at least for about three weeks, the wind has regularly gone down with the sun, strong as it has been
each day.
6. This edition is now available on CD-ROM:
http://www.haraldfischerverlag.de/hfv/index_digitale_deutsch.html?/hfv/Digital/belon.htm
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As we go up the hill in the woods east of Hubbard’s Close, I hear a singular sound through the roaring of the
wind amid the trees, which I think at first some creature forty rods off, but it proves to be the creaking of one
bough on another. When I knew what it was I was surprised to find it so near, even within a rod. It was
occasioned by two little dead limbs, an inch or less in diameter, on two different white pines which stood four
or five feet apart, – such limbs as are seen on every white pine below the living ones, some twelve feet from the
ground. These with every motion of the trees in the wind were grating back and forth on each other, and had
worn into one another, and this produced, not a mere coarse, grating sound, but a perfect viol sound, such as I
never heard from trees before, – a jarring or vibratory creak, as if the bow leaped on the strings, for one limb
was bow and the other string. It was on one key or note when the trees approached, and quite another and very
fine and sharp when they receded. I raised one limb with a pole, and the music ceased. This was as musical as
a viol, a forest viol, which might have suggested that instrument to some Orpheus wandering in the wood. He
would only have to place a box of resonant wood beneath to complete a simple viol. We heard several others
afterward which made a coarse, squeaking noise like a bird, but this would have suggested music to any one. It
was mythologic, and an Indian might have referred it to a departed spirit. The fiddles made by the trees whose
limbs cross one another, – played on by the wind! When we listened, in the wood, we heard all kinds of creaking
and groaning sounds from the laboring trees.
We go seeking the south sides of hills and woods, or deep hollows, to walk in this cold and blustering day. We
sit by the side of Little Goose Pond, which C. calls Ripple Lake or Pool, to watch the ripples on it. Now it is
nearly smooth, and then there drops down on to it, deep as it lies amid the hills, a sharp and narrow blast of the
icy north wind careering above, striking it, perhaps, by a point or an edge, and swiftly spreading along it, making
a dark-blue ripple. Now four or five windy bolts, sharp or blunt, strike it at once and spread different ways. The
boisterous but playful north wind evidently stoops from a considerable height to dally with this fair pool which
it discerns beneath. You could sit there and watch these blue shadows playing over the surface like the light and
shade on changeable silk, for hours. It reminds me, too, of the swift Camilla on a field [of] grain. The wind often
touches the water only by the finest points or edges. It is thus when you look in some measure from the sun, but
if you move round so as to come more opposite to him, then all these dark-blue ripples are all sparkles too bright
to look at, for you now see the sides of the wavelets which reflect the sun to you.
A large fox-hole in Britton’s hollow, lately dug; an ox-cartload of sand, or more, thrown up on the hillside.
Watching the ripples fall and dash across the surface of low-lying and small woodland lakes is one of the
amusements of these windy March and April days. It is only on small lakes deep sunk in hollows in the woods
that you can see or study them these days, for the winds sweep over the whole breadth of larger lakes
incessantly, but they only touch these sheltered lakelets by fine points and edges from time to time.
And then there is such a fiddling in the woods, such a viol-creaking of bough on bough, that you would think
music was being born again, as in the days of Orpheus. Orpheus and Apollo are certainly there taking lessons;
aye, and the jay and the blackbird, too, learn now where they stole their “thunder.” They are perforce silent,
meditating new strains.
When the playful breeze drops on the pool, it springs to right and left, quick as a kitten playing with dead leaves,
clapping her paw on them. Sometimes it merely raises a single wave at one point, as if a fish darted near the
surface. While to you looking down from a hillside partly from the sun, these points and dashes look thus darkblue, almost black, they are seen by another, standing low and more opposite to the sun, as the most brilliant
sheeny and sparkling surface, too bright to look at. Thus water agitated by the wind is both far brighter and far
darker than smooth water, seen from this side or that, – that is, as you look at the inclined surface of the wave
which reflects the sun, or at the shaded side. For three weeks past, when I have looked northward toward the
flooded meadows they have looked dark-blue or blackish, in proportion as the day was clear and the wind high
from the northwest, making high waves and much shadow.
We can sit in the deep hollows in the woods, like Frosty Hollow near Ripple Lake, for example, and find it quite
still and warm in the sun, as if a different atmosphere lurked there; but from time to time a cold puff from the
rude Boreas careering overhead drops on us, and reminds us of the general character of the day. While we lie at
length on the dry sedge, nourishing spring thoughts, looking for insects, and counting the rings on old stumps.
These old gray or whitish stumps, with their porous structure where the ducts are seen, are very much like bones,
– the bones of trees. I break a little cube out of this old oak stump, which was sawed off some thirty years ago,
and which has about one hundred rings, – a piece sharply square-cornered and exactly the form of a square
bunch of matches; and, the sawed end being regularly channelled by time in the direction of the ducts and of
the silver grain, it looks precisely like the loose ends, or dipped end of the bunch, and would be mistaken for
such on any shelf.
Those ripple lakes lie now in the midst of mostly bare brown or tawny dry woodlands, themselves the most
living objects. They may say to the first woodland flowers, We played with the north winds here before ye were
CAT
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born.
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1860
February 6, Monday: Henry Thoreau was being written to by the conspirator and publisher James Redpath, who was
presumably in New-York, passing along a message that was to be handed surreptitiously to Franklin Benjamin
Sanborn in Concord. Redpath was keeping his address secret so that if Thoreau were subpoenaed by the
congressional committee, he would be able to testify that he truly did not know. Redpath had directed the
printers to give him proofs of Thoreau’s lecture “A Plea for Captain John Brown” and his “Remarks at
Concord on the Day of the Execution of John Brown,” and would check their typesetting before ECHOES OF
HARPER ’S FERRY got printed. (The “Private Life” to which the letter makes reference was another book to go
through the presses during this year, THE PUBLIC LIFE OF CAPT. JOHN BROWN: WITH AN AUTO-BIOGRAPHY
OF HIS CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH, a book which Redpath was dedicating to Wendell Phillips, Ralph Waldo
Emerson, and Henry D. Thoreau):
THE PUBLIC LIFE OF BROWN
Febry 6, 1860
Henry D Thoreau
Dear Sir— If you do not
desire to know my address, (which you had
better not know if you have any prospect of
being summoned to Washington) please hand
the enclose knot to F.B.S. who, perhaps, may wish to see me to consult as to
our future course. I have been regularly
summoned, but have resolutely refused to
obey the summons; & am in the country, now,
to have quiet until I shall complete the
forth coming Volume. I directed your Lecture
to be sent to you for correction; which—I am
told—has been done.
Can you furnish me with an a/c of the
B. of B.J? I was very conscious of the defects
of the a/c I copied; but as I recollect very
little about the B, I cd not undertake
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to describe it from my own resources. I shall
however, yet obtain the testimony of the
eye witnesses; as I have all their names
(the “Orderly Book” that you allude to) &
will either see or write to every man
who was present, as soon as I can
get their addresses, or leave Mass.
Page 2
for K. Terrtory I shall probably visit the
ground in the Spring.
For the Private Life I have already
a number of very Interesting Letters from
Kansas men,—just such plain, matter
of fact statements as you are greedy for,
& which, better than any rhetorical estimates
of John Brown’s character or career, exhibit
to the intelligent reader the Spirit &
life of the old Warrior.
The very numerous faults of language
(there have been very few of facts) & the imperfect estimates of character which
disfigure my Book warn me—& I will
take heed the hint—to be more time in
fixing another original volume. As
for my forth coming Book, as it is an Edited
volume only, I have nothing to fear in
that a/c.
I have not even yet attempted
to arrange my voluminous Newspaper
Materials, & do not see that I shall
be able to commence it for some
to come weeks yet. This is my apology or
reason rather for neglecting (in appear
ance) my promise with reference to
Miss Thoreau’s Scrap Book.
I find that the extracts that
Page 3
have made in my Book inttr for yr
Lecture were incorrectly reported. Do
you desire that they shall be altered?
If so, please return the volume I sent
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you properly marked; & I will return
you as many Vols as you desire with
the latest corrections. The 33d
thousand has been printed & contains
many corrections not in the Edition I
sent you. The prospect is that it will
reach over 50000 at least. I think it
will do good among the masses; that is all
I tried to do—for the educated have teachers
enough; & over them I do not aspire
to have influence.
Remember me to Mrs Thoreau
& thank her, in my own name & in behalf of
my Wife, also—for her kind invitation; which
we shall, as soon as possible, accept.
Very trly Yours,
Jas Redpath
February 6. To Cambridge.
A rainy day.
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(While Thoreau was in Cambridge, the records of the Harvard Library indicate that he checked out Claudius
Ælianus’s 5th-Century collection of miscellaneous anecdotes SOPHISTAE VARIAE HISTORIAE LIBRI XIV in a 1713
edition, the Reverend Edward Topsell’s THE HISTORY OF FOUR-FOOTED BEASTS AND SERPENTS, and Dr.
Pierre Belon’s L’HISTOIRE DE LA NATVRE DES OYSEAUX AVEC LEVRS DESCRIPTIONS; & NAÏFS PORTRAICTS
RETIREZ DU NATUREL: ESCRIT EN SEPT LIVRES. He would make extracts from the book on birds by Dr. Belon
in his 2d Commonplace Book.)
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February 17, Friday: Bronson Alcott came home from Boston with a copy of the March issue of Atlantic Monthly,
containing Louisa May Alcott’s article “Love and Self-Love.”
Professor William Henry Harvey read a “serio-comic squib” on Darwinism, before the Dublin University
Zoological and Botanical Association. This would subsequently be printed for private circulation as A GUESS
AS TO THE PROBABLE ORIGIN OF THE HUMAN ANIMAL CONSIDERED BY THE LIGHT OF MR DARWIN’S THEORY
OF NATURAL SELECTION, AND IN OPPOSITION TO LAMARCK’S NOTION OF A MONKEY PARENTAGE. Charles
Darwin, who had a great admiration for Harvey’s work, would display a remarkable forbearance:
I am not sorry for a natural opportunity of writing to Harvey,
just to show that I was not piqued at his turning me and my book
into ridicule, not that I think it was a proceeding that
I deserved, or worthy of him.
Feb. 17. P. M.—Cold and northwest wind, drifting the snow. 3 P. M., thermometer 14°.
A perfectly clear sky except one or two little cloud-flecks in the southwest, which, when I look again after
walking forty rods, have entirely dissolved. When the sun is setting the light reflected from the snow-covered
roofs is quite a clear pink, and even from white board fences.
Grows colder yet at evening, and frost forms on the windows.
I hear that some say they saw a bluebird and heard it sing last week!! It was probably a shrike.
Minott says that he hears that Heard’s testimony in regard to Concord River in the meadow case was that “it is
dammed at both ends and cursed in the middle,” i. e. on account of the damage to the grass there.
We cannot spare the very lively and lifelike descriptions of some of the old naturalists. They sympathize with
the creatures which they describe. Edward Topsell in his translation of Conrad Gesner, in 1607, called “The
History of Four-footed Beasts,” says of the antelopes that “they are bred in India and Syria, near the river
Euphrates,” and then—which enables you to realize the living creature and its habitat—he adds, “and delight
much to drink of the cold water thereof.” The beasts which most modern naturalists describe do not delight in
anything, and their water is neither hot nor cold. Reading the above makes you want to go and drink of the
Euphrates yourself, if it is warm weather. I do not know how much of his spirit he owes to Gesner, but he
proceeds in his translation to say that “they have horns growing forth of the crown of their head, which are very
long and sharp; so that Alexander affirmed they pierced through the shields of his soldiers, and fought with them
very irefully: at which time his company slew as he travelled to India, eight thousand five hundred and fifty,
which great slaughter may be the occasion why they are so rare and seldom seen to this day.”
Now here something is described at any rate; it is a real account, whether of a real animal or not. You can plainly
see the horns which “grew forth” from their crowns, and how well that word “irefully” describes a beast’s
fighting! And then for the number which Alexander’s men slew “as he travelled to India,” — and what a
travelling was that, my hearers! — eight thousand five hundred and fifty, just the number you would have
guessed after the thousands were given, and [AN] easy one to remember too. He goes on to say that “their horns
are great and made like a saw, and they with them can cut asunder the branches of osier or small trees, whereby
it cometh to pass that many times their necks are taken in the twists of the falling boughs, whereat the beast with
repining cry, bewrayeth himself to the hunters, and so is taken.” The artist too has done his part equally well,
for you are presented with a drawing of the beast with serrated horns, the tail of a lion, a cheek tooth (canine?)
as big as a boar’s, a stout front, and an exceedingly “ireful” look, as if he were facing all Alexander’s army.
Though some beasts are described in this book which have no existence as I can learn but in the imagination of
the writers, they really have an existence there, which is saying not a little, for most of our modern authors have
not imagined the actual beasts which they presume to describe. The very frontispiece is a figure of “the gorgon,”
which looks sufficiently like a hungry beast covered with scales, which you may have dreamed of, apparently
just fallen on the track of you, the reader, and snuffing the odor with greediness.
These men had an adequate idea of a beast, or what a beast should be, a very bellua (the translator makes the
word bestia to be “a vastando”); and they will describe and will draw you a cat with four strokes, more beastly
or beast-like to look at than Mr. Ruskin’s favorite artist draws a tiger. They had an adequate idea of the wildness
of beasts and of men, and in their descriptions and drawings they did not always fail when they surpassed
nature.
Gesner says of apes that “they are held for a subtil, ironical, ridiculous and unprofitable beast, whose flesh is
not good for meat as a sheep, neither his back for burthen as an asses, nor yet commodious to keep a house like
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a dog, but of the Grecians termed gelotopoios, made for laughter.” As an evidence of an ape’s want of
“discretion,” he says: “A certain ape after a shipwreck, swimming to land, was seen by a countryman, who
thinking him to be a man in the water gave him his hand to save him, yet in the mean time asked him what
countryman he was, to which he answered that he was an Athenian: Well, said the man, dost thou know Piraeus
(a port in Athens)? Very well, said the ape, and his wife, friends and children. Whereat the man being moved,
did what he could to drown him.” “They are best contented to sit aloft although tied with chains.... They bring
forth young ones for the most part by twins, whereof they love the one and hate the other; that which they love
they bear on their arms, the other hangeth at the dam’s back, and for the most part she killeth that which she
loveth, by pressing it too hard: afterward, she setteth her whole delight upon the other.”
February 18, Saturday: Philémon et Baucis, an opéra by Charles Gounod to words of Barbier and Carré after La
Fontaine, was performed for the initial time, in the Théâtre-Lyrique, Paris.
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Feb. 18. A snow-storm, falling all day; wind northeast.
The snow is fine and drives low; is composed of granulated masses one sixteenth to one twentieth of an inch in
diameter. Not in flakes at all. I think it is not those large-flaked snow-storms that are the worst for the traveller,
or the deepest.
It would seem as if the more odd and whimsical the conceit, the more credible to the mass. They require a
surprising truth, though they may well be surprised at any truth. For example, Gesner says of the beaver: “The
biting of this beast is very deep, being able to crash asunder the hardest bones, and commonly he never loseth
his hold until he feeleth his teeth gnash one against another. Pliny and Solinus affirm, that the person so bitten
cannot be cured, except he hear the crashing of the teeth, which I take to be an opinion without truth.”
Gesner (unless we owe it to the translator) has a livelier conception of an animal which has no existence, or of
an action which was never performed, than most naturalists have of what passes before their eyes. The ability
to report a thing as if [it] had occurred, whether it did or not, is surely important to a describer. They do not
half tell a thing because you might expect them to but half believe it. I feel, of course, very ignorant in a
museum. I know nothing about the things which they have there, — no more than I should know my friends in
the tomb. I walk amid those jars of bloated creatures which they label frogs, a total stranger, without the least
froggy thought being suggested. Not one of them can croak. They leave behind all life they that enter there, both
frogs and men. For example, Gesner says again, “The tree being down and prepared, they take one of the oldest
of their company, whose teeth could not be used for the cutting, (or, as others say, they constrain some strange
beaver whom they meet withal, to fall flat on his back),... and upon his belly lade they all their timber, which
they so ingeniously work and fasten into the compass of his legs that it may not fall, and so the residue by the
tail draw him to the water side, where those buildings are to be framed, and this the rather seemeth to be true,
because there have been some such taken that had no hair on their backs, but were pilled, which being espied
by the hunters, in pity of their slavery or bondage, they have let them go away free.” Gives Albertus and Olaus
Magnus as authorities for this.
Melvin tells me that he went a day or two ago to where G.M. Barrett had placed a dead cow of his, and that he
found the snow thickly tracked by foxes to within five feet around the carcass, and they appeared to have sat
down there, but so suspicious of some trick were they that they had not touched it.
Sometimes, when I go forth at 2 P.M., there is scarcely a cloud in the sky, but soon one will appear in the west
and steadily advance and expand itself, and so change the whole character of the afternoon and of my thoughts.
The history of the sky for that afternoon will be but the development of that cloud.
I think that the most important requisite in describing an animal, is to be sure and give its character and spirit,
for in that you have, without error, the sum and effect of all its parts, known and unknown. You must tell what
it is to man. Surely the most important part of an animal is its anima, its vital spirit, on which is based its
character and all the peculiarities by which it most concerns us. Yet most scientific books which treat of animals
leave this out altogether, and what they describe are as it were phenomena of dead matter. What is most
interesting in a dog, for example, is his attachment to his master, his intelligence, courage, and the like, and not
his anatomical structure or even many habits which affect us less.
If you have undertaken to write the biography of an animal, you will have to present to us the living creature,
i. e., a result which no man can understand, but only in his degree report the impression made on him.
Science in many departments of natural history does not pretend to go beyond the shell; i. e., it does not get to
animated nature at all. A history of animated nature must itself be animated.
The ancients, one would say, with their gorgons, sphinxes, satyrs, mantichora, etc., could imagine more than
existed, while the moderns cannot imagine so much as exists.
In describing brutes, as in describing men, we shall naturally dwell most on those particulars in which they are
most like ourselves, — in which we have most sympathy with them.
We are as often injured as benefited by our systems, for, to speak the truth, no human system is a true one, and
a name is at most a mere convenience and carries no information with it. As soon as I begin to be aware of the
life of any creature, I at once forget its name. To know the names of creatures is only a convenience to us at
first, but so soon as we have learned to distinguish them, the sooner we forget their names the better, so far as
any true appreciation of them is concerned. I think, therefore, that the best and most harmless names are those
which are an imitation of the voice or note of an animal, or the most poetic ones. But the name adheres only to
the accepted and conventional bird or quadruped, never an instant to the real one. There is always something
ridiculous in the name of a great man, — as if he were named John Smith. The name is convenient in
communicating with others, but it is not to be remembered when I communicate with myself.
If you look over a list of medicinal recipes in vogue in the last century, how foolish and useless they are seen to
be! And yet we use equally absurd ones with faith to-day.
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When the ancients had not found an animal wild and strange enough to suit them, they created one by the
mingled [traits] of the most savage already known, — as hyenas, lionesses, pards, panthers, etc., etc., — one
with another. Their beasts were thus of wildness and savageness all compact, and more ferine and terrible than
any of an unmixed breed could be. They allowed nature great license in these directions. The most strange and
fearful beasts were by them supposed to be the offspring of two different savage kinds. So fertile were their
imaginations, and such fertility did they assign to nature. In the modern account the fabulous part will be
omitted, it is true, but the portrait of the real and living creature also.
The old writers have left a more lively and lifelike account of the gorgon than modern writers give us of real
animals.
February 23, Thursday: The special train conveying President-elect Abraham Lincoln and his party, including his son
Robert Lincoln, had departed from Springfield, Illinois on the morning of February 11th and experienced a
lengthy and leisurely transit by way of Lafayette and Indianapolis in Indiana, Columbus and Cleveland in
Ohio, Pittsburg and Philadelphia in Pennsylvania. Buffalo and Albany and New-York in New York, and
Baltimore in Maryland. On this day the entourage arrived at the national capital, Washington, District of
Columbia.
Feb. 23. 2 P. M.—Thermometer 56°. Wind south.
3 P. M.—Thermometer 58° and snow almost gone. River rising. We have not had such a warm day since the
beginning of December (which was remarkably warm).
I walk over the moist Nawshawtuct hillside and see the green radical leaves of the buttercup, shepherd’s-purse
(circular), sorrel, chickweed, cerastium, etc., revealed.
About 4 P. M. a smart shower, ushered in by thunder and succeeded by a brilliant rainbow and yellow light from
under the dark cloud in the west. Thus the first remarkable heat brings a thunder-shower.
The words “pardall” and “libbard,” applied by Gesner to the same animal, express as much of the wild beast as
any. read in Brand’s “Popular Antiquities” that “Bishop Stillingfleet observes, that among the Saxons of the
northern nations, the Feast of the New Year was observed with more than ordinary jollity: thence, as Olaus
Wormius and Scheffer observe, they reckoned their age by so many Iolas.” (Iola, to make merry.—Gothic.)
So may we measure our lives by our joys. We have lived, not in proportion to the number of years that we have
spent on the earth, but in proportion as we have enjoyed.
February is pronounced the coldest month in the year. In B.’s “Popular Antiquities” is quoted this from the
Harleian Manuscripts:—
“Fevrier de tous les mois,
Le plus court et moins courtois.”
In the same work it is said that this saying is still current in the north of England:—
“On the first of March,
The crows begin to search.”
Would it not apply to the crows searching for their food in our meadows, along the water’s edge, a little later?
A fact stated barely is dry. It must be the vehicle of some humanity in order to interest us. It is like giving a man
a stone when he asks you for bread. Ultimately the moral is all in all, and we do not mind it if inferior truth is
sacrificed to superior, as when the moralist fables and makes animals speak and act like men. It must be warm,
moist, incarnated, — have been breathed on at least. A man has not seen a thing who has not felt it.
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REV. JOHN BRAND
POPULAR ANTIQUITIES
February 28: Nathaniel Hawthorne’s TRANSFORMATION was published in England (which would be published in the
United States on March 7th as THE MARBLE FAUN; OR, THE ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI).
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Feb. 28. 2 P. M.—Thermometer 52; wind easterly. To Conantum.
I am surprised to see how my English brook cress has expanded or extended since I saw it last fall to a bed four
feet in diameter, as if it had grown in the water, though it is quite dirty or muddied with sediment. Many of the
sprigs turn upwards and just rest on the water at their ends, as if they might be growing. It has also been eaten
considerably by some inhabitant of the water. I am inclined to think it must grow in the winter.
What is that bluish bulb now apparently beginning to shoot in the water there, floating loose (not the waterpurslane)?
I suppose they are linarias which I still see flying about.
Passed a very little boy in the street to-day, who had on a home-made cap of a woodchuck-skin, which his father
or elder brother had killed and cured, and his mother or elder sister had fashioned into a nice warm cap. I was
interested by the sight of it, it suggested 60 much of family history, adventure with the chuck, story told about
[it], not without exaggeration, the human parents’ care of their young these hard times. Johnny was promised
many times, and now the work has been completed, — a perfect little idyl, as they say. The cap was large and
round, big enough, you would say, for the boy’s father, and had some kind of cloth visor stitched to it. The top
of the cap was evidently the back of the woodchuck, as it were expanded in breadth, contracted in length, and
it was as fresh and handsome as if the woodchuck wore it himself. The great gray-tipped wind hairs were all
preserved, and stood out above the brown only a little more loosely than in life. As if he put his head into the
belly of a woodchuck, having cut off his tail and legs and substituted a visor for the head. The little fellow wore
it innocently enough, not knowing what he had on, forsooth, going about his small business pit-a-pat; and his
black eyes sparkled beneath it when I remarked on its warmth, even as the woodchuck’s might have done. Such
should be the history of every piece of clothing that we wear.
As I stood by Eagle Field wall, I heard a fine rattling sound, produced by the wind on some dry weeds at my
elbow. It was occasioned by the wind rattling the fine seeds in those pods of the indigo-weed which were still
closed, — a distinct rattling din which drew my attention to it, — like a small Indian’s calabash. Not a mere
rustling of dry weeds, but the shaking of a rattle, or a hundred rattles, beside.
Looking from Hubbard’s Bridge, I see a great water-bug even on the river, so forward is the season.
I take up a handsomely spread (or blossomed) pitch pine cone, but I find that a squirrel has begun to strip it first,
having gnawed off a few of the scales at the base. The squirrel always begins to gnaw a cone thus at the base,
as if it were a stringent law among the squirrel people, — as if the old squirrels taught the young ones a few
simple rules like this.
C. saw a dozen robins to-day on the ground on Ebby Hubbard’s hill by the Yellow Birch Swamp.
One tells me that George Hubbard told him he saw blackbirds go over this forenoon.
One of the Corner Wheelers feels sure that he saw a bluebird on the 24th, and says he saw a sheldrake in the
river at the factory “a month ago.” I should say that the sheldrake was our hardiest duck.
It suggests from what point of view Gesner (or his translator) describes an animal, — how far he takes into
account man’s relation to it, — that he commonly gives the “epithets” which have been applied to it. He deals
in description, and epithets are a short description. And the translator says to the reader, “All these rows and
ranks of living four-footed beasts are as letters and midwives to save the reverence which is due to the Highest
(that made them) from perishing within you.”
I hear this account of Austin:—
An acquaintance who had bought him a place in Lincoln took him out one day to see it, and Austin was so
smitten with the quiet and retirement and other rural charms that he at once sold his house in Concord, bought
a small piece of rocky pasture in an out-of-the-way part of this out-of-the-way town, and with the funds raised
by the sale of his old house built him a costly stone house upon it. Now he finds that this retirement (or country
life) is the very thing which he does not want, but, his property being chiefly invested in the house, he is caught
in a trap, as it were, for he cannot sell it, though he advertises it every year. As for society, he has none; his
neighbors are few and far between, and he never visits them nor they him. They can do without him, being old
settlers, adscripti glebae. He found one man in the next town who got his living by sporting and fishing, and he
has built him a little hut and got him to live on his place for society and helpfulness. He cannot get help either
for the outdoor or indoor work. There are none thereabouts who work by the day or job, and servant-girls decline
to come so far into the country. Surrounded by grain-fields, he sends to Cambridge for his oats, and, as for milk,
he can scarcely get any at all, for the farmers all send it to Boston, but he has persuaded one to leave some for
him at the depot half a mile off.
As it is important to consider Nature from the point of view of science, remembering the nomenclature and
system of men, and so, if possible, go a step further in that direction, so it is equally important often to ignore
or forget all that men presume that they know, and take an original and unprejudiced view of Nature, letting her
make what impression she will on you, as the first men, and all children and natural men still do. For our science,
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so called, is always more barren and mixed up with error than our sympathies are.
As I go down the Boston road, I see an Irishman wheeling home from far a large damp and rotten pine log
for fuel. He evidently sweats at it, and pauses to rest many times. He found, perhaps, that his wood-pile was
gone before the winter was, and he trusts thus to contend with the remaining cold. I see him unload it in his yard
before me and then rest himself. The piles of solid oak wood which I see in other yards do not interest me at all,
but this looked like fuel. It warmed me to think of it. He will now proceed to split it finely, and then I fear it
[will] require almost as much heat to dry it, as it will give out at last. How rarely we are encouraged by the sight
of simple actions in the street! We deal with banks and other institutions, where the life and humanity are
concealed, — what there is. I like at least to see the great beams half exposed in the ceiling or the corner.
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1863
September 7, Monday: With the Confederate forces having evacuated Fort Wagner and Battery Gregg, Federal troops
were able to occupy all of Morris Island in Charleston Harbor.
Calvin H. Greene went for a walk outside Concord and found a young maple that had already turned fire-red.
He broke off a branch with leaves and, on his return to the Thoreau home, tossed this up into an evergreen tree
where it could be seen from the windows of the house. “It caught Mrs T’s eyes — after breakfast, & she went
to wondering what it meant. When I showed her, she exclaimed, “There that was just like my son, Henry”
(Calvin of course felt most highly honored by such a comparison of himself by the mother Cynthia Dunbar
Thoreau with her beloved son Henry Thoreau — as she undoubtedly had grasped full well that her house guest
would be — she was slathering the icing onto the cake of his trip to Concord). After dinner with the Thoreaus,
and sad farewells, he went on the train to Boston and put up at the Parker House.
Sophia Elizabeth Thoreau and Waldo Emerson met to plan for Emerson to represent her interests before James
Thomas Fields in contracting for the publication of EXCURSIONS:
Boston MA: Ticknor and Fields, 1863 (stereotyped and printed by H.O. Houghton in Cambridge MA).
First edition.
Edited by Ralph Waldo Emerson and Sophia Thoreau.
Biographical sketch [by Emerson] — Natural history of Massachusetts. — A walk to Wachusett.
— The landlord. — A winter walk. — The succession of forest trees. — Walking. — AUTUMNAL TINTS.
— Wild apples. — Night and moonlight.
319 p. incl. front. (port.) 18 cm.
PS3045 .A1 1863
I learn from Topsell’s Gesner, whose authority appears to be
Albertus, that the following is the way in which the hedgehog
collects and carries home his apples. He says,—
His meat is apples, worms, or grapes: when he findeth
apples or grapes on the earth, he rolleth himself upon
them, until he have filled all his prickles, and then
carrieth them home to his den, never bearing above one
in his mouth; and if it fortune that one of them fall
off by the way, he likewise shaketh off all the residue,
and walloweth upon them afresh, until they be all
settled upon his back again. So, forth he goeth, making
a noise like a cart-wheel; and if he have any young ones
in his nest, they pull off his load wherewithal he is
loaded, eating thereof what they please, and laying up
the residue for the time to come.
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“MAGISTERIAL HISTORY” IS FANTASIZING: HISTORY IS CHRONOLOGY
“Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project:
Conrad Gesner and the Reverend Edward Topsell
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COPYRIGHT NOTICE: In addition to the property of others,
such as extensive quotations and reproductions of
images, this “read-only” computer file contains a great
deal of special work product of Austin Meredith,
copyright 2014. Access to these interim materials will
eventually be offered for a fee in order to recoup some
of the costs of preparation. My hypercontext button
invention which, instead of creating a hypertext leap
through hyperspace —resulting in navigation problems—
allows for an utter alteration of the context within
which one is experiencing a specific content already
being viewed, is claimed as proprietary to Austin
Meredith — and therefore freely available for use by
all. Limited permission to copy such files, or any
material from such files, must be obtained in advance
in writing from the “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo”
Project, 833 Berkeley St., Durham NC 27705. Please
contact the project at <[email protected]>.
“It’s all now you see. Yesterday won’t be over until
tomorrow and tomorrow began ten thousand years ago.”
– Remark by character “Garin Stevens”
in William Faulkner’s INTRUDER IN THE DUST
Prepared: December 8, 2014
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ARRGH AUTOMATED RESEARCH REPORT
GENERATION HOTLINE
This stuff presumably looks to you as if it were generated by a
human. Such is not the case. Instead, someone has requested that
we pull it out of the hat of a pirate who has grown out of the
shoulder of our pet parrot “Laura” (as above). What these
chronological lists are: they are research reports compiled by
ARRGH algorithms out of a database of modules which we term the
Kouroo Contexture (this is data mining). To respond to such a
request for information we merely push a button.
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Commonly, the first output of the algorithm has obvious
deficiencies and we need to go back into the modules stored in
the contexture and do a minor amount of tweaking, and then we
need to punch that button again and recompile the chronology —
but there is nothing here that remotely resembles the ordinary
“writerly” process you know and love. As the contents of this
originating contexture improve, and as the programming improves,
and as funding becomes available (to date no funding whatever
has been needed in the creation of this facility, the entire
operation being run out of pocket change) we expect a diminished
need to do such tweaking and recompiling, and we fully expect
to achieve a simulation of a generous and untiring robotic
research librarian. Onward and upward in this brave new world.
First come first serve. There is no charge.
Place requests with <[email protected]>. Arrgh.
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