The Spiders and their Relatives – A work of art

by Oscar Allen 27.JUL.07

I take off my cap in a sign of respect and satisfaction for some books that have passed into my hands these past months. A Dwight Venner reader on Caribbean Development is the most recent item; but Mark Da Silva and Company has two unexpected volumes which I will discuss shortly. Karl John has a good study of Land Reform; Kenneth John and Company present us with two “Flambean” readers from our anti colonial community 40 years ago, and then there is the late Bernard Marshall’s book on slavery ‘Slavery, Law and Society in the British Windward Island 1763 – 1823: A Comparative Study’.{{more}}

You know it hurts me that our regional learning centre, the UWI, shows so little respect for “small island” studies and small island students. None of these rich publications would be published by the UWI Press. (All were self published, more or less).

Next week (DV), I will write about Dr. Marshall’s book on slavery, but today I look at 2 books by Father Mark Da Silva and his co authors. The other books during August.

A TOUR THRU RAINBOW LAND

At first, the book was a captivating art gallery of plant and animal – including marine – life in SVG. The pages of the book just kept turning themselves as my eyes and my mind went touring through rainbow land. Goodwhile I hadn’t seen a camacherry tree-nature’s “crazy glue” supplier. And the last ‘moren’ that I had seen was nearly 60 years ago dancing through the stones at Colonarie bayside, but there it was in this book called “The Natural History of Mustique”.

The book is much more than pictures though. Generally reliable science, history and cultural notes in the text make the glossy images more meaningful. In fact, the book is an audit or a baseline report of what nature is like on Mustique today. The idea is that the splurge of real estate development on that part of our territory must not cause the natural heritage to become rundown. This beautiful book, requested by the Mustique residents, is therefore to be used as a conservation tool, while decorating the imagination with information like: breeze from the manchioneal tree gives some people rash! It shows us the other glorious face of Mustique. Diane Wilson and Mark Da Silva: thanks.

Now, you and I, we don’t expect a priest to be interested in spiders, to go searching for them, taking their photos, looking into their family, and sending overseas to find out their names, then writing a book about them? But names like Labat and de Chardin remind us of other nature priests and cosmos priests, people who study and consider the garden and the skies; the psalmists were maybe like them too!

The book entitled “The Spiders and their relatives and of St. Vincent and the Grenadines” is truly “a work of art, science and love” (Philmore Isaacs). Mark DaSilva, G. Alayon Cuba) and Julia A Harrocks (Barbados) worked together on it. The photos are clear and compelling, the text is easy to read and without frills. I was relieved to learn that our deadly tarantula spider, although it will raise its legs “showing its red fangs menacingly”, has a bite more like a Jack Spaniards sting (p23). I found the eleven pages of Spider Biology to be very instructive.

The book lists 181 species of spiders in SVG; it has an introduction which includes a brief history of spider studies on SVG. Among the aims of this “guidebook” to our spiders, the authors want:

• to introduce us to the beauty and variety of our spiders

• to show us their importance, and

• to interest our young scholars in further spider research.

As I was putting the spider text away, I glanced at another publication with a ground beetle picture on its cover; it was describing the use of insects and spiders to manage pests that infest rice cultivation in the Philippines. It made me wonder. Stepping back from these two books that Mark DaSilva and colleagues present to us, I am more aware of the garden in which we live and choke each other. Let us take a deeper breath as we look each other in the eye, spotting and drawing out the beauty within. Consider the lilies.