Bee-Listers

Posted on by Tom Fleming

In 1884, 282 hibernating bumblebees travelled on a ship from London to New Zealand. Only 48 survived the journey. Those were the first bumblebees to take flight in the country. They had been shipped over at the request of British settlers, who needed British insects to pollinate the red clover imported from their homeland. Nearly […]

…But Not as We Know It

Posted on by Tom Fleming

In 1832, while HMS Beagle was anchored off San Salvador, Brazil, Charles Darwin went ashore to explore. There he saw rocks that glittered, as if burnished, in the sun. Darwin hypothesised that the shining was caused by a thin coating of metallic oxides but could not account for how it had been made. The strange […]

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