Life on a little-known planet

322 Pages·1968·13.211 MB·English

by  Evans, H.E.

Life on A
Little-Known Planet

A distinguished scientist's witty and
informative views of man and his insect
neighbors

Howard Ensign Evans

Author of WASP FARM

Life on a

Little-known
Planet

Howard Ensign Evans

illustrations by Arnold Clapman

A Dutton Paperback
E. P.Dutton / New York
Grateful acknowledgment is made for permission to use
the following copyright material:
Don Marquis, archy and mehitabel
(Doubleday & Company, Inc.)
C. B. Williams, Insect Migration
(Wm. Collins Sons & Co. Ltd.)
W. M. Wheeler, Foibles of Insects and Men
(Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.)
W. M. Wheeler, "The Dry-Rot of Academic Biology,"
in Science, Vol. 57 (January 19, 1923).
This paperback edition of Life on a Little—known Planet first published in 1978 by E. P.
Dutton, a Division of Sequoia-Elsevier Publishing Company, Inc., New York
Copyright © 1966, 1968 by Howard E. Evans All rights reserved. Printed in
the U.S.A.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from
the publisher, except by a reviewer who wishes to quote brief passages in connection with
a review written for inclusion in a magazine, newspaper or broadcast.
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 68-25771 ISBN: 0-525-47493-5
Published simultaneously in Canada by
Clarke, Irwin & Company Limited, Toronto and Vancouver
10 987654 3 21
This book is dedicated to
the book lice and silverfish
that share my study with
me. May they find it
digestible!

Acknowledgments

Chapter 3 is an expansion of an essay which first appeared in
Harper's, © 1966 by Harper's Magazine, Inc. Chapter 8 is an
outgrowth of a review of Oldroyd's The Natural History of Flies
published in Scientific American, © 1966 by Scientific American,
Inc.
I am greatly indebted to various specialists who have reviewed
individual chapters for errors of fact and interpretation. These are:
Kenneth Christiansen (Chapter 2), Louis Roth (Chapter 3), George H.
Bick (Chapter 4), Richard D. Alexander (Chapter 5), James E. Lloyd
and John B. Buck (Chapter 6), Lincoln Brower and Jo Brewer
(Chapter 7), Carroll M. Williams (Chapter 9), Ashley B. Gurney
(Chapter 10), Stanley Flanders (Chapter 11), and Elwood C.
Zimmerman (Chapter 12).
Robert Matthews and Mary Alice Evans read major portions of the
manuscript critically, and Janice Matthews read the entire manuscript
and made a great many helpful suggestions. Katherine Pearson typed
the manuscript and also made many useful suggestions.
H. E. E.

Preface to the

1978 Edition

A decade has passed since Life on a Little-known Planet burst
like a nova on the intellectual scene. (Or was it like a fly hitting
a pest-strip?) Since then we have indeed put a man on the
moon and enjoyed close views of the surface of Mars in all its
rusty desolation. Voyager II is on its way to study Jupiter,
Saturn, and perhaps Uranus and Neptune. Exobiologists seem
only a little less hopeful. Who knows, there may yet be a
microbe or two on Mars or slithy toves gyring and gim-bling
on a moon of Saturn. Voyager even contains a record of
"sounds of earth," for the benefit of any toves that may have a
hi-fi set. (I had hoped they would include the song of the
snowy tree cricket and Schubert's Impromptu in A-flat, but
NASA had other ideas.) Meanwhile, back on earth, the
Committee of Scientific Society Presidents has determined that
"basic science is in trouble." What -with national defense,
energy development, and a new raise for government
employees, there just isn't enough money to study what's left of
life on earth. Ironic that this should happen just as we have
begun to exploit a "useless" plant, jojoba, as a source of rubber,
and just as