Research into marine sterols falls neatly into three chronological periods.

A philosopher, busily sorting the world into the blue and the unblue, tells us that some ink is blue. We look at the ink one way, and it looks blue.

At and in the neighbourhood of North Meoks, near Ormskirk in Lancashire, there is a whole country of peat, and how deep this soil is God only knows, for the horses which plough thereon wear pattens to keep them from sinking to the bellies: here I was not long ago deluded, by my ignorance of the country and a team in pattens, to attempt riding over ploughed ground to inquire my way.

Ginger, a showy, fast horse — as if he had been figged with ginger under his tail; a red-haired man.