![]() ''We can imagine the shipboard menu,'' Mr. A pair of the 30-pound creatures could feed a whole ship's crew. That's Dutch for ''disgustingīird,'' though they were not so disgusting that nobody would eat them. In 1598, Dutch explorers stopping in Mauritius, the small island 500 miles off the east coast of Madagascar, found a profusion of large-headed, big-butted flightless birds we call dodos and they called walckvgel. And islands consign animal and plant species ![]() Quammen shows, is not nature in miniature, however much it might awe a human visitor, for in its isolation and limited extent, it functions as an island. And maybe here and there a nature preserve.īut a nature preserve, Mr. ![]() That fabric, the author warns, is unraveling, as once-unbroken expanses of woods, jungle and grassland, home to untold species of plant and animal life, are sliced up into industrial parks, housing developments,įarms, parking lots, malls, roads. Thought experiment, David Quammen begins ''The Song of the Dodo,'' his magnificent account of island biogeography - a science that is not only about islands but about the wholeįabric of the natural world. ![]() You're left with a pile of worthless tatters and scraps. The swatches may together occupy the same area as they did before. Slice up a fine Persian carpet into a few dozen neat rectangular pieces. Island Biogeography in an Age of Extinctions. ![]()
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