How far from Jerusalem? Tropical customs and the question of race in the Book of John Mandeville

The Book of John Mandeville, while ostensibly a pilgrimage guide documenting an English knight’s journey into the East, is an ideal text in which to study the developing concept of race in the European Middle Ages. The Mandeville-author’s sense of place and morality are inextricably linked to each other: Jerusalem is the center of his world, which necessarily forces Africa and Asia to occupy the spiritual periphery. Most inhabitants of Mandeville’s landscapes are not monsters in the physical sense, but at once startlingly human and irreconcilably alien in their customs. Their religious heresies, disordered sexual appetites, and monstrous acts of cannibalism label them as fallen state of the European Christian self. Mandeville’s monstrosities lie not in the fantastical, but the disturbingly familiar, coupling recognizable humans with a miscarriage of natural law. In using real people to illustrate the moral degeneracy of the tropics, Mandeville’s ethnography helps shed light on the missing link between medieval monsters and modern race theory.

Factors influencing the start of development in Daphnia pulex winter eggs [Translation from: Biological Reviews Vol. 13, 24-26, 1951]

The winter eggs of Daphnia pulex, after passing safely through the winter , develop and hatch in the spring, multiplying by themselves, while some males emerging among them with the changes in environment produce fertile eggs, which are universally known as winter eggs . This study researches the factors governing the development of winter eggs through experiments.

Long-term natural acidification of upland sites in Cumbria: Evidence from post-glacial lake sediments

Studies by the Freshwater Biological Association over the last 25 years have supplied data relevant to the levels of acidity in local soils and water before the onset of industrial pollution and current interest in acid rain. This article reviews published analysis from cores of lake sediments, in or near the catchment of the River Duddon. Electron spin resonance spectra of humic acids and iodine values confirm evidence from pollen analysis for a history of progressive acidification of the source material of lake sediments since before 5000 radiocarbon years, in upland catchments of the Lake District. Processes involved included: removal of basic ions from soils by rainfall, the effects of which were intensified by removal by man of deciduous forest; acidification of soils and waters by decomposition products of Calluna and further acidification of waters by Sphagnum species which colonized habitats where drainage became impeded by paludification processes.

Water mites: predators and parasites

The majority of water mites found in freshwater belong to the Hydrachnellae, a group which exhibit striking morphological diversity. This paper reviews work on the structure, morphology and taxonomy. The role of water mites as predators, their life history and their parasitic associations with aquatic insect or freshwater mollusc hosts is discussed along with the distribution of water mites in the British Isles.