'Then came those old-fashioned books of natural history that dealt courageously with The Universe, illustrating it with quaint engravings of strange rock formations in the Hartz Mountains, the Mammoth caves in Kentucky, the Aurora Borealis, and the eruption of Mount Etna; always with little men armed with long staves, looking as though they themselves were responsible for the phenomena. But none of these were part of the school curricula.'