When you wanted to see what a Finback whale looked like, or were curious about certain words:
cal'a·bash \ˈka-lə-ˌbash\ 1. The common gourd (plant or fruit)
2. The fruit of the calabash tree.
3. A water dipper, bottle, basket, or other utensil, made from the dried shell of the calabash or other gourd
- where did you turn? Perhaps in even the remotest of outposts you might be lucky enough to have a 1909 edition of the Webster's International Dictionary - all 14-1/2 pounds of it. A hefty tome, that might reside upon a designated library table. By oil lamp augmented by firelight, you might discover Ectopistes migratorius, the Passenger pigeon, "the common wild pigeon of North America".
(Sadly five years after that confident declaration, the last passenger pigeon died in captivity.*)
(Sadly five years after that confident declaration, the last passenger pigeon died in captivity.*)
Now the oil lamp, firelight and 3-D dictionary have been replaced by a flickering screen, portable devices and instant gratification. But I will occasionally brave the odd silverfish, Lepisma saccharina and eye-straining typeface, to turn the still sturdy pages and look up words like: Fur'be-low, Pal'imp-sest, and Tol'u-ta'tion.
* http://www.audubon.org/magazine/may-june-2014/why-passenger-pigeon-went-extinct
Marbled endpaper. Webster's International Dictionary, 1909
''a traveler, by some established conveyance''... as in 'you can get there from here'... it starts w/ the first step...
ReplyDeleteIn May 1850, a 20-year-old Potawatomi tribal leader named Simon Pokagon was camping at the headwaters of Michigan’s Manistee River during trapping season when a far-off gurgling sound startled him. It seemed as if “an army of horses laden with sleigh bells was advancing through the deep forests towards me,” he later wrote. “As I listened more intently, I concluded that instead of the tramping of horses it was distant thunder; and yet the morning was clear, calm, and beautiful.” The mysterious sound came “nearer and nearer,” until Pokagon deduced its source: “While I gazed in wonder and astonishment, I beheld moving toward me in an unbroken front millions of pigeons, the first I had seen that season.”
ReplyDelete