Apologies to birding-aus for my carelessness.
I posted a message seeking the words of a poem by Ruskin Bond about a snake
and a frog. (It arose from a message about birds.)
Someone responded asking for the words if I found them. I haven't yet, but
in answering I wanted to delete something from my draft reply and somehow
deleted the original message.
Would that person please send me another message.
And if I may further seek the indulgence of birding-aus:
I use Eudora for email and there is a specific command for emptying the
trash - which I take to mean that deleted messages are still stored
somewhere until I do 'empty the trash', but I have been unable to discover
any way of getting at such messages.
If it is possible, I'd be most grateful for advice as to how to retrieve
deleted messages if I haven't emptied the trash.
TIA ... and again my apologies.
Syd Curtis at Hawthorne., Qld.
H Syd Curtis
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so over evolutionary time. They may do so now, if
those seeking to preserve biodiversity are able to be effective. But that
has nothing to do with the survival of the fittest.)
So I surmise that with birds, in many cases relatively minor differences in
plumage between varieties, or subspecies, or even closely related species,
are a matter of chance rather than being attributable to any particular
reason.
And if you'd like an evolutionary conundrum, consider this: Australia has
four of the 36 species of stinging trees, genus _Dendrocnide_, found from
China to the Pacific. For humans, the slightest brush against a leaf
results in intense pain which lasts for hours and recurs periodically for
weeks. Not only do caterpillars eat these leaves, but I've seen a possum
sitting in a Stinging Tree (_D. excelsa_) happily munching on its leaves,
and on another occasion, a Satin Bowerbird (mature male) browsing on the
leaves of _D. photinophylla_).
Now the stinging hairs and the poison they contain are too complex to have
arisen in a single chance event. It seems more likely that they evolved in
stages as a result of some survival advantage. But what? Jim?
Is this an example of an evolving predator/prey war?
Oh yes, and as an additional bit of interesting if useless information,
Bill Francis, who was Government Botanist in Queensland in the early 1950's
proved to his own painful satisfaction, that a dried herbarium specimen
many decades old could still sting!
Syd Curtis at Hawthorne, Qld.
H Syd Curtis
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