The dodo is an extinct flightless bird that was endemic to the island of Mauritius, which is east of Madagascar in the Indian Ocean. The dodo's closest relative was the also-extinct and flightless Rodrigues solitaire. The two formed the subfamily Raphinae, a clade of extinct flightless birds that were a part of the family which includes pigeons and doves. The closest living relative of the dodo is the Nicobar pigeon. A white dodo was once thought to have existed on the nearby island of Réunion, but it is now believed that this assumption was merely confusion based on the also-extinct Réunion ibis and paintings of white dodos.
Herbert George Wells was an English writer. Prolific in many genres, he wrote more than fifty novels and dozens of short stories. His non-fiction output included works of social commentary, politics, history, popular science, satire, biography, and autobiography. Wells' science fiction novels are so well regarded that he has been called the "father of science fiction".
The Time Machine is a post-apocalyptic science fiction novella by H. G. Wells, published in 1895. The work is generally credited with the popularization of the concept of time travel by using a vehicle or device to travel purposely and selectively forward or backward through time. The term "time machine", coined by Wells, is now almost universally used to refer to such a vehicle or device.
Taxidermy is the art of preserving an animal's body by mounting or stuffing, for the purpose of display or study. Animals are often, but not always, portrayed in a lifelike state. The word taxidermy describes the process of preserving the animal, but the word is also used to describe the end product, which are called taxidermy mounts or referred to simply as "taxidermy".
John Gould was an English ornithologist who published monographs on birds, illustrated by plates produced by his wife, Elizabeth Gould, and several other artists, including Edward Lear, Henry Constantine Richter, Joseph Wolf and William Matthew Hart. He has been considered the father of bird study in Australia and the Gould League in Australia is named after him. His identification of the birds now nicknamed "Darwin's finches" played a role in the inception of Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection. Gould's work is referenced in Charles Darwin's book, On the Origin of Species.
Lyall's wren or the Stephens Island wren was a small, flightless passerine belonging to the family Acanthisittidae, the New Zealand wrens. Now extinct, it was once found throughout New Zealand, but when it came to the attention of scientists in 1894, its last refuge was Stephens Island in Cook Strait. Often claimed to be a species driven extinct by a single creature, the wren in fact fell victim to the island's numerous feral cats. The wren was described almost simultaneously by both Walter Rothschild and Walter Buller. It became extinct shortly after.
"The Land Ironclads" is a short story by British writer H. G. Wells, which originally appeared in the December 1903 issue of the Strand Magazine. It features tank-like "land ironclads," 80-to-100-foot-long armoured fighting vehicles that carry riflemen, engineers, and a captain, and are armed with semi-automatic rifles.
The Stolen Bacillus and Other Incidents is a collection of fifteen fantasy and science fiction short stories written by the English author H. G. Wells between 1893 and 1895. It was first published by Methuen & Co. in 1895 and was Wells's first book of short stories. All of the stories had first been published in various weekly and monthly periodicals.
Written in the late 19th century by H. G. Wells and first published in The Butterfly, and collected in The Obliterated Man and Other Stories, "A Vision of Judgment" is a short story in 9 sections. It portrays a Last Judgment in which God and the archangel Gabriel laugh at sinners and saints alike, embarrassing them until they flee "up the sleeve of God." After every human soul has taken shelter there, all of humanity, "enlightened" and "in new clean bodies," is given a second chance. God shakes them—or rather us—"out of his sleeve upon the planet he had given us to live upon, the planet that whirled about green Sirius for a sun," saying "now that you understand me and each other a little better. . . . try again."
"The Empire of the Ants" is a 1905 short story by H. G. Wells about the littleness of humanity and the tenuousness of the dominion Homo sapiens enjoys on Earth. A 1977 film, Empire of the Ants, was loosely based on Wells' story.
H. G. Wells was a prolific writer of both fiction and non-fiction. His writing career spanned more than sixty years, and his early science fiction novels earned him the title of "The Father of Science Fiction".
Martha Ann Maxwell was an American naturalist, artist and taxidermist. She helped found modern taxidermy. Maxwell's pioneering diorama displays are said to have influenced major figures in taxidermy history who entered the field later, such as William Temple Hornaday and Carl Akeley. She was born in Pennsylvania in 1831. Among her many accomplishments, she is credited with being the first woman field naturalist to obtain and prepare her own specimens. She was inducted into the Colorado Women's Hall of Fame in 1985.
The nature fakers controversy was an early 20th-century American literary debate highlighting the conflict between science and sentiment in popular nature writing. The debate involved important American literary, environmental and political figures. Dubbed the "War of the Naturalists" by The New York Times, it revealed seemingly irreconcilable contemporary views of the natural world: while some nature writers of the day argued as to the veracity of their examples of anthropomorphic wild animals, others questioned an animal's ability to adapt, learn, teach, and reason.
"A Deal in Ostriches" is a short story by the British writer H. G. Wells. It is a cautionary tale about simple human greed. The taxidermist of Wells’ story "Triumphs of a Taxidermist" (1894) makes a return appearance as the narrator of the story.
Taxidermy, or the process of preserving animal skin together with its feathers, fur, or scales, is an art whose existence has been short compared to forms such as painting, sculpture, and music. The word derives from two Greek words: taxis, meaning order, preparation, and arrangement and derma, meaning skin. Directly translated, taxidermy means "skin art."
The War of the Worlds is a science fiction novel by English author H. G. Wells. It was written between 1895 and 1897, and serialised in Pearson's Magazine in the UK and Cosmopolitan magazine in the US in 1897. The full novel was first published in hardcover in 1898 by William Heinemann. The War of the Worlds is one of the earliest stories to detail a conflict between humankind and an extraterrestrial race. The novel is the first-person narrative of an unnamed protagonist in Surrey and his younger brother in London as southern England is invaded by Martians. It is one of the most commented-on works in the science fiction canon.
Select Conversations with an Uncle, published in 1895, was H. G. Wells's first literary publication in book form. It consists of reports of twelve conversations between a fictional witty uncle who has returned to London from South Africa with "a certain affluence," as well as two other conversations.
"The Diamond Maker" is a short story by H. G. Wells, first published in 1894 in the Pall Mall Budget. It was included in The Stolen Bacillus and Other Incidents, the first collection of short stories by Wells, published in 1895.
"Living Fossil" is a science fiction story by American writer L. Sprague de Camp, on the concepts of human extinction and future evolution. It was first published in the magazine Astounding Science-Fiction for February 1939. It first appeared in book form in the anthology A Treasury of Science Fiction ; it later appeared in the anthologies Gates to Tomorrow, and The SFWA Grand Masters, Volume 1. The story has been translated into Danish, Swedish and Italian.
"Æpyornis Island", or "Aepyornis Island", is a short story by H. G. Wells, first published in 1894 in the Pall Mall Budget. It was included in The Stolen Bacillus and Other Incidents, the first collection of short stories by Wells, first published in 1895.
