Indeed, the obstacles in the way of compiling a comprehensive dictionary of the classical language are enormous, when one reflects on the vastness of the surviving literature, the fantastic richness of the language, the diverse matrilingual origins of the writers themselves, and the time and the area over which the language has continued to be written in its present form: for fourteen hundred years, in places as far apart as China and Spain.

The Hunter had called in at Fiji to collect sandalwood and bêche de mer on a voyage between Calcutta and New South Wales.

The communal nature of ostriches may have made these birds more amenable to life in captivity.

The line was built by navvies using little more than wheelbarrows and shovels, with whatever material was close at hand, and the railway suffered from earthworks problems right from the start.