ter  surprises may a us. “A leading Britis,” e t in 1995, “t of giant ground slotand as nesses of the Amazon basin.”

    Perly, t  named; perly,not slotegorically sayt no sucil every jungly glade igated, and we are a longway from ac.

    But even if co tcorners of t  be effort enoug is. Life’sextraordinary fecundity is amazing, even gratifying, but also problematic. to survey it all, youurn over every rock, sift tter on every forest floor, sieveunimaginable quantities of sand and dirt, climb into every forest canopy, and devise muc o examine tems. Intered a deep cave in Romania t side  unknoy-ts andotures—spiders, centipedes, lice—all blind, colorless, and neo science.

    turn were feeding on springs.

    Our instinct may be to see ty of tracking everytrating,dispiriting, per it can just as  unbearablyexciting. e live on a planet t e capacity to surprise. reasoning person could possibly  it any other way?

    is nearly al arresting in any ramble ttered disciplines ofmodern science is realizing o devote lifetimes to t sumptuously esoteric lines of inquiry. In one of epes on spent fifty years, from 1906 to ly studying a genus of land snails in Polynesia called Partula. Over and over, yearafter year, Crampton measured to tiniest degree—to eigle curves of numberless Partula, compiling ts into fastidiously detailedtables. A single line of text in a Crampton table could represent  andcalculation.

    Only sliged, and certainly more unexpected,  before o speak, Ki