Nature

Human variation — that is, inequality — has always existed in fact, and science demonstrates it every single day. HUMAN VARIATION (Academic Press, N.Y.) is edited by R. Travis Osborne and Clyde E. Noble (pictured), psychologists of international repute based at the University of Georgia.…

The mysterious homing instinct of animals, and the human sense of home and homeland by Revilo P. Oliver THE Manchester Guardian may have been a liberal publication when it was founded in 1821. When I first began to glance occasionally at copies of it, a hundred and thirty years later, it had already become…

BIRDS MAY NOT be so bird-brained after all. A study of Japanese tits has shown they can “speak in phrases”, an ability previously thought to be the unique preserve of humans. Displaying talents that may force us to revise our traditional notions of human superiority, Japanese tits — close relatives…

by John Calhoun ONE OF MY favorite activities is hiking in the beautiful mountains of Southern Appalachia. I try to find the most difficult and most remote trails that I can. Being far away from the sound of traffic and the chattering of a rapidly changing racial demographic centers me. Whereas modern…

More evidence that abstract reasoning is not confined to humans — and that there is no hard-edged boundary between humans and the rest of Nature, but rather a continuum. AN EXPERIMENT has proven that ravens can imagine being spied on and adapt their behavior accordingly, showing an ability to…

by H. Millard PERHAPS WE have a lesson to learn from the Hass avocado, Grasshopper; and about the mutant-hating bastards who are trying to kill us all off. In the 1920s, Rudolph Hass planted some seedling avocado trees that he thought were all of the Lyon variety. One of the trees turned out to be different.…

I HAD THE opportunity to re-watch the The Lion King recently, and I was astounded at how secretly rightist and traditionalist the film is. (Granted, the mainstream media did complain about this when the film was first released.) For starters, Disney’s most popular film about Africa doesn’t feature…

This great 19th-century poem of Nature-mysticism contains intimations of Cosmotheism. by William Cullen Bryant, 1824 THE GROVES were God’s first temples. Ere man learned
To hew the shaft, and lay the architrave,
And spread the roof above them, — ere he framed
The lofty vault, to gather…

Selections from Hitler’s Table Talk I THINK THE MAN who contemplates the universe with his eyes wide open is the man with the greatest amount of natural piety: not in the religious sense, but in the sense of an intimate harmony with things. At the end of the last century the progress of science…