50 Years Ago

Professor Rankama has rightly drawn attention to the prevailing disorder in geochronological time-units and the abbreviations used for them, and his advocacy of “megayear” and “gigayear” is worthy of support. But the current international abbreviation for “year” ... is not “yr” but “a” and the appropriate abbreviations for megayear and gigayear are thus Ma and Ga. The admittedly incongruous appearance (for English-speaking readers) of the first may perhaps explain why it has not yet been generally adopted.

From Nature 1 July 1967

100 Years Ago

One day recently I went to look at a chaffinch's nest which I had known of for some time. I had just begun to climb up the hawthorn-tree in which the nest was placed when I heard the “pink, pink” of an alarmed chaffinch, and immediately about five cock chaffinches and more than half a dozen hens and young ones appeared from what seemed to me nowhere. These chaffinches flew all round the tree in a most agitated manner, and one cock actually got on top of my head and pulled my hair vigorously, while a hen, which ... I think was the mate of my assailant, flew on to the nest and pecked at me every time I tried to touch it. Their attack induced me to get down; and not until I was more than fifty paces from the tree did the other chaffinches go away. Not very long after this I was in the garden when I saw two cuckoos which were flying very low, and I could clearly perceive that one of them was carrying an egg in its beak ... I know that there has been much dispute as to whether cuckoos do or do not carry their eggs; but in this instance I can personally testify that a cuckoo was carrying what was obviously an egg.

From Nature 28 June 1917 Footnote 1