Identification by Internet

[Una Smith]

After the lovely fish, how about some nice Cretaceous fruit preserves
for dessert?  Only 70 million years old.  I've been meaning for weeks
now to digitize a photo of my mysterious fruit and put it up somewhere
for angiosperm specialists to see.  I showed it to everyone at the New
York Botanical Garden, who said "Dunno", and to A. Takhtajan, who said
"Hm, very interesting".  Sorry, Jim:  no anthers or styles.  No petals,
sepals, bracts, stems, or leaves.  "Very difficult" is more like it.


In Usenet, alt.binaries.pictures.* have a fabulous 3-part FAQ on image
viewers for every platform, all free, all available over the Internet.
Thanks to the folks who are interested in exchanging pornography via
the Internet, there are viewers galore, and some are truly superb!

Also, sunsite.unc.edu allows public telnet access to a gopher client,
so if you have telnet, you can have gopher instantly, courtesy of the
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.  Scott Yanoff's popular
Usenet FAQ on Internet services lists other public gopher access points.

My guide to Internet resources (details below) explains how to get all
these FAQs and much more.  You may find a copy useful, if you don't
already have one.

Regards,

        Una Smith

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

                                How to Get

                A Biologist's Guide to Internet Resources


The Guide contains an overview and lists of free Internet resources such as:

        scientific discussion groups:  newsgroups and mailing lists
        research newsletters, directories, and bibliographies
        huge data and software archives
        tools for finding and retrieving information
        a bibliography of useful books and Internet documents

The current version of the free 55-page Guide can be obtained over the
Internet via Usenet, gopher, anonymous FTP and e-mail:

   -- In Usenet, look in sci.bio, sci.answers, or news.answers.

   -- Gopher to sunsite.unc.edu, and choose this sequence of menu items:

                Worlds of SunSITE
                        Ecology and Evolution

      Or, from any gopher offering other biology gophers by topic, look for
      the menu item "Ecology and Evolution [at UNC and Yale]".  The Guide
      is stored there in two ways:  as a file for easy retrieval of the
      entire file, and as a menu for browsing and retrieving key sections.

   -- FTP to rtfm.mit.edu.  Give the username "anonymous" and your e-mail
      address as the password.  Use the "cd" command to go to the directory

                pub/usenet/sci.answers/biology/guide/

      and use "prompt" and "mget *" to copy the guide (in parts) to your
      computer.  You may want to use a text editor to remove the headers
      and trailing signature from each part of the guide, then merge them
      before printing.

      For information about how to get other useful documents from this
      archive, look for a file named "help".  For an index of all other FAQs
      on scientific topics, go to the pub/usenet/sci.answers/ directory and
      get the file "index".

      You can also use anonymous FTP to sunsite.unc.edu, where the Guide is
      stored as a single file:

                pub/academic/biology/ecology+evolution/FAQ

   -- Send e-mail to mail-server at rtfm.mit.edu with the text

                send usenet/news.answers/biology/guide/*

      You will receive the Guide in several parts:  save each part separately,
      delete the e-mail headers and trailers of each, and merge them.  For
      help using the mail server, send the text "help".  For an index of all
      other FAQs on (more or less) scientific topics, send the text

                send pub/usenet/sci.answers/index

Enjoy!

        Una Smith                       smith-una at yale.edu

Department of Biology, Yale University, New Haven, CT  06520-8104  USA