Natural History in Anecdote Illustrating the nature, habits, manners and customs of animals, birds, fishes, reptiles, etc., etc., etc. — A Closer Reading

From Scientific Summary to Traveler’s Tale

The camel section exemplifies the book’s characteristic shift in pace and perspective. It opens with a factual paragraph on the camel’s adaptation to desert life, noting its capacity to drink “fifty, sixty, or even a hundred pounds’ weight” of water and travel at “a uniform rate of three miles an hour.” The language is measured, informative, and impersonal. Then, without transition, the text moves to a quotation from Mr. Macfarlane, who recounts seeing Arabs kiss their camels “in gratitude and affection” after a desert journey. The voice becomes intimate, the detail tactile: camels “curve and twist their long lithe necks” and “follow his master like a pet dog.” This juxtaposition—dry fact followed by warm observation—is a recurring structural device. It allows Miles to present natural history as both a science and a human experience, though the reader must adjust to the sudden change in register.

The Editor’s Hand and the Anthology’s Voice

Miles describes his role as “arranged and edited by,” and the excerpts show him as a compiler who selects and orders but rarely comments. The preface is the only place where his own voice appears directly; thereafter, he cedes the floor to a chorus of travelers, naturalists, and earlier writers. This creates a polyphonic effect: the gorilla section draws on Du Chaillu’s first-person hunting narrative, while the camel section weaves together Macfarlane, Mrs. Bowdich, and an unnamed writer from “Tales of Animals.” The result is a mosaic of styles—from the breathless immediacy of a hunt to the measured reflection of a Victorian traveler. Miles’s editorial presence is felt mainly in the taxonomic structure and the occasional footnote, but the reader experiences the book as a series of discrete voices, each with its own pace and focus.

Pace as a Tool for Emphasis

The pacing within individual anecdotes often mirrors the behavior described. In the camel section, the slow, steady rhythm of the animal’s travel—“three miles an hour” for “ten or twelve hours”—is echoed by the unhurried accumulation of detail about its diet and load-bearing capacity. Then, when the dromedary is introduced, the prose quickens: it attains “a speed which the Arab compares to the speed of the wind.” Similarly, Mrs. Bowdich’s account of mounting a camel builds tension through a sequence of physical shocks—the hind-legs rising first, the rider thrown forward, the blow to the chest—before settling into the animal’s characteristic gait. These shifts in tempo are not accidental; they guide the reader’s attention, slowing down for exposition and accelerating for drama, much as a naturalist might vary the pace of a lecture to hold an audience.

Readers approaching Natural History in Anecdote should be prepared for a work that moves fluidly between scientific observation and personal reminiscence. The editor’s taxonomic framework provides a skeleton, but the flesh of the book is made of voices—some measured, some urgent, some affectionate. Pay attention to the sources cited: they reveal the range of experience Miles draws upon, from professional naturalists to casual travelers. The anecdotes are best read not as a continuous narrative but as a series of windows, each offering a different light on the animal world.

Flipping through Miles’s old anecdotes, I lingered on a passage about a squirrel’s precise, almost anxious hoarding—such carefulness felt familiar, like a quiet diary of instinct. That same patient attention seems to live in Squirrels and Other Fur-Bearers — Background and Themes, where observation softens into affection. I closed one book, opened the other, and lost the afternoon entirely.