Synchronous Fireflies
"Many of the familiar fireflies that flit over our lawns in summer are called roving fireflies because the males fly about singly, searching for females perched in low vegetation. The male flashes rhythmically, and when a female flashes in response, the two fireflies begin a courtship involving a series of alternating flashes that lead the male to the female. For 300 years explorers and naturalists have reported another kind of firefly behavior, seen in the region stretching from India to the Philippines and New Guinea. There the fireflies gather in trees in dense swarms, and the males flash on and off in the same rhythm.
"Observers have marveled at the beauty of the synchronous flashing, but beauty alone does not explain the persistent fascination of the displays. What has been irresistible to many are the questions of how and why. How is it possible for thousands of fireflies to coordinate their flashing so exactly, cycle after cycle, and why do they do it? We hope to show that the questions are linked, in the sense that one cannot understand the why of synchronous flashing without understanding the how."
Nature Faking
"Even the renowned Jean-Henri Fabre, who has been more lauded and quoted than any other nature writer of a foreign country, could not refrain from errors due to supposition and incomplete observation, one of which — namely, the intended puncture of the central ganglia of spiders by the captor wasp for the purpose of paralyzing — has been shown to be a fallacy. These cases, however, in which the carefully investigating naturalists are remiss, come from closely related facts and are not born entirely of the desire to relate wonders and unheard-of things."
Fossil Footprints from the Grand Canyon
"Tracks of extinct animals have been discovered in the Grand Canyon of the Colorado River. They are so remarkably well preserved that they have been prepared as a permanent exhibit on the Hermit Trail in the Canyon. The fossils of the Hermit Trail occur in a fine-grained sandstone of Permian age, the period after the Carboniferous or principal coal-forming period.
"One of the sandstone slabs that was excavated bears footprints of a new species; the creature was apparently a short, squat quadruped with a wide body and was evidently slow of movement, as indicated by the short stride."
Reclaiming the Steppes
"Over the ages, soil deposits have formed vast areas which have encroached upon a large inland sea, contracting its dimensions and elevating its bottom so that large vessels can no longer traverse it.
"As the sea diminished in size, so did the supply of watery vapor in the adjacent atmosphere; with less moisture, the land nearby has gradually changed. To restore this area to a state of fertility is the object of a large-scale engineering project. The lead engineer estimates that in 40 years the levels would be so nearly the same that the channel would be navigable and the fertile system would appear once more."