Burton

I continue to get good value out of my Burton, the purchase of which was noticed at reference 1. Not the Arabist, Sir Richard Francis Burton KCMG FRGS, the chap perhaps best known for his translation of the Arabian Nights, rather Maurice Burton, the zoologist and sometime curator of sponges at the Natural History Museum in London.

Today I read about the Canadian Porcupine, a large & common rodent which spends a lot of time up trees, and quite frequently falling to their deaths out of them. It seems clear that they got to Canada from South America not long after the two Americas were joined up, but it is not so clear what happened before that, whether or not they descended from the rather smaller African Porcupine, the only sort that I knew about before today.

With thanks to wikipedia for the picture.

Reference 1: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2014/11/dalhousie.html.