Most people are surprised when they hear my somber figures: we know of 2 million species of plants, animals and microorganisms, and we can give them each a scientific name and a diagnostic description. We know, perhaps generously, more than just a little bit of the anatomy in no more than 10 percent. We have done thorough studies in fewer than one-tenth of 1 percent. And the total number of species on Earth is unknown to the nearest order of magnitude.

The vast majority of species that are vanishing, we haven't even discovered yet. How can you possibly put them back in nature if the ecosystem is gone?

Human nature is deeper and broader than the artificial contrivance of any existing culture.

In fact, nothing in science as a whole has been more firmly established by interwoven factual information, or more illuminating than the universal occurrence of biological evolution. Further, few natural processes have been more convincingly explained than evolution by the theory of natural selection, or as it has been popularly called, Darwinism.

I had in mind a message, although I hope it doesn't intrude too badly, persuading Americans, and especially Southerners, of the critical importance of land and our vanishing natural environment and wildlife.

The ant world is a tumult, a noisy world of pheromones being passed back and forth.

No one knows the diversity in the world, not even to the nearest order of magnitude. ... We don't know for sure how many species there are, where they can be found or how fast they're disappearing. It's like having astronomy without knowing where the stars are.