The Germans had ridden the tiger of Islamic rage and resentment a long way – across the Red Sea into Eritrea and Somalia, into the inner sanctum of the Arabian desert, then winding through Mesopotamia, Persia and Afghanistan […]
[…] a devoted doctor Mr Brettoneau, a certain the Honourable Martin Hawke who, it appears, filled his daily hours with sword-fencing and lessons in duelling, and a witsome Irishman called Mr Hume who led the Lieutenant-Colonel in numerous forays through Amboise Forest with loaded muskets in search of boars.
Preadaptation involves the changes in a plant or animal that eventually contribute to, say, a structure that helps survival, but which take place before that structure is fully formed. […] Thus, an insect that has evolved the useful disguise of looking very much like a piece of dung in order to damp the enthusiasm of any non-coprophagous predator is clearly on to a good thing but, as Stephen Jay Gould has wisely observed, what is the adaptive value in looking only 5 per cent like a turd?
