Author: Theophilus Lucas

1Highways and Byways in Sussex

By E. V. Lucas

A very personal and opinionated wander through the Sussex of around 1900, illustrated with anecdotes, literary and poetic quotations, gravestone epitaphs and a gentle sense of humour. The author colours the countryside with his nostalgia for times past and regret for the encroaching future, his resentment of churches with locked doors, and his love of deer parks, ruined castles and the silent hills.<br><br>(I must add my apologies for my attempts at the Sussex dialect in the chapter on that subject.)<br><br>[This book is of Reading Grade of 9.55 (i.e. equivalent to 9½ years of U.S. education. Reading Ease score of 63.72 (on a scale from 100 to 0 .. where 65 is easy, 30 a little hard, 0 difficult). These are Flesch-Kincaid readability scores.]

2Animals of the Past

By Frederic Lucas

Prior to the emergence of paleontology and comparative anatomy as scientific disciplines at the end of the 18th century, it was generally known that there were species of animals that had disappeared completely. The term "extinction" originally applied to the extinguishing of fires or erasing of one's debt. It was not until 1784 that the term extinction was used to denote the complete eradication of a species of living being. In 1901, Frederic A. Lucas penned an overview of vertebrate animals whose only evidence of being remained in fossil records. The book focuses primarily on vertebrate animals, from fish to mammals. - Summary by Jeffery Smith