100 YEARS AGO During my visit to South Australia, I wished to obtain some specimens of insects of the country, for my naturalist friends at home. At first I experienced considerable difficulty in catching those whose movements were rapid, without injuring their bodies. Recently I have been able to secure nearly every specimen seen, by the following method. A small antitoxin syringe was charged with benzol, and a small jet of liquid was directed towards the beast sought for (a large tarantula, for example); the result of this form of attack was to render the beast almost instantly inert, so that it was easily secured. I am not at all sure that benzol is the best liquid for the purpose; but I used it, as it happened to be the only substance I could obtain; at a distance from a township, which appeared likely to produce the desired effect.

From Nature26 January 1899.

50 YEARS AGO Driven by his deafness to read his way through the Detroit Public Library, Edison wrote long afterwards that he found that almost any book would supply entertainment or instruction. This book, which contains selected excerpts from his writings, supplies the first in good measure and, for those who reflect on reading, more than a modicum of the second. The pages from the diary which form the opening section of the book are full of whimsical humour which one would not have expected from a prodding experimenter who died with more than a thousand inventions to his credit. There is little reference in the book to Edison's experimental work, except for a short account of his early struggles to make a motion picture machine, carried out in a studio irreverently called the “Black Maria”. But the background is there, revealed in the words that experiments in a laboratory consist mostly in finding out that something will not work. ... Edison's observations on the possibilities of atomic energy, his somewhat casual remarks on the influences that make for peace or war and his comments on disarranged economic systems — all these make reading which is the more interesting because of all that has happened since the last of these lines was written.

From Nature29 January 1949.