Gosh, a most fascinating read with lots of stuff for a beginner (me) to follow up on.
Thank you.
Where should I start ?
Perhaps towards the end, with this :- "This 1880 London, UK text is in a series of natural history books for children."
I love dipping into 'old' books, the language and style is a reflection of more leisurely times.
So I googled a bit and found a copy to download at archive.org
(Infact I found two, one has some missing pages and is not OCRed to text.)
(is it permitted to post links ?)
your ref to it being a children's book reminded me of one of my favourite childhood books of a similar vintage, (-the book, not us!- ) on my grandmother's bookshelf :-
"Through Magic Glasses, and other lectures" by Arabella B. Buckley
(also available on archive.org as well as on gutenberg.org)
which set me off on a lifelong journey through amateur astronomy and other physics things and professionally to electronics and spacecraft telemetry !
as you can see it is still with me !
A delayed prolog, (prologue ? don't ask) aka other musings__________>
"Pater noster tractor(1*) ruts",, "meiofauna(2*) and protists(3*)"
1:-Ferguson tractors, later Massey Ferguson
I knew of British Ferguson tractors (1a*), in my youth, causing ruts; I never heard of Paternoster Tractors, nor their ruts, before !
I did know of the religious connotations with rosary beads, so it was most interesting to learn (upon googling) of glacial Paternoster lakes., as strings of lakes connected by thin streams. It seems that there are some in Scotland, UK but not ? this far south in England, UK.
An old geography teacher did tell me that the ice-age glaciers stopped about at this hillside ridge that I now live upon, (or maybe the one just to the north of me !)
1a:-My son-in-law has acquired one, restored it and uses it regularly for haymaking and other small-holding duties, as well as showing it at 'gatherings'
This following started as a memo to myself (variously from google snippets or wiki), so cut and discard as needed, now musings of a beginner in biology and microscopy ,,,
2:- meiofauna,
(also Meiobenthos)
"are small benthic(4) invertebrates that live in both marine and fresh water environments. The term meiofauna loosely defines a group of organisms by their size, larger than microfauna but smaller than macrofauna, rather than a taxonomic grouping. In practice, that is organisms that can pass through a 1 mm mesh but will be retained by a 45um mesh, but the exact dimensions will vary from researcher to researcher."
{ 4:- benthic =
{ " Benthos is the community of organisms that live on, in, or near the seabed, river, lake, [ or stream bottom, also known as the benthic zone.[1] This community lives in or near [ marine or freshwater sedimentary environments, from tidal pools along the [ foreshore, out to the continental shelf, and then down to the abyssal depths. "
}
I already had a sort of an idea about benthic, as destinct from pelagic, but this was a good time to revise.
3:-
Protists " are a group of loosely connected, mostly(?3a*) unicellular eukaryotic(3b*) organisms that are not plants, animals or fungi. There is no single feature such as evolutionary history or morphology common to all these organisms and they are unofficially placed under a separate kingdom called Protista. Therefore, protists are no longer a formal classification, and different members show varying degrees of homology "
{gulp, this could take a wee while!}
" with species belonging to all five eukaryotic kingdoms. However, it is still used as a term of convenience to describe eukaryotic microscopic organisms. "
(gulp)
from
https://biologydictionary.net/protist/
(3a) hmmm I wonder what the other, less than mostly, are 2? 3? multi ??
(3b)
Eeek, watch this space
"that lone deer which ambled down the slope"
Perhaps looking for a rut !? LOL
"microscopy world views have infused and enriched my world views."
And now mine too it seems ! Thank you, fascinating stuff
"Please purchase low cost pyrex dishes..these hold shallow depth collection samples"
and can be officially declared one's own, avoiding confusion with and the displeasure of the domestic staff
"pater noster trio"
a triumvirate even ?
"no epibionts noted on the dozen observed."
" An epibiont (from the Ancient Greek meaning 'living on top of') is an organism that lives on the surface of another living organism. An epibiont is, by definition(A*), harmless to its host. In this sense, the interaction between the two organisms can be considered neutralistic or commensalistic; as opposed to being, for example, parasitic, in which case one organism benefits at the expense of the other, or mutualistic, in which both organisms obtain some explicit benefit from their coexistence). Examples of common epibionts are barnacles, remoras, and algae, "
Wow! Never too old to learn -- I knew about parasites and symbionts,,, but there is a whole other world out there !!
(A) by who's definition ? More research needed! That sort of casual assumed knowledge reminds me of an old maths prof who had the very annoying habit of saying ",, it is obvious therefore that ,,, " grrrr, it wasn't always obvious !
"finger-nail clam"
Not met them before, come next spring I'll have to investigate if we have them in south-west GB !
"and then spread globally!"
moments later in a following post my prayer is answered, and no beads were involved !!