Though I know that I can do little to help the animals, I often check dog rehoming websites. Looking through page upon page of pitiful faces looking up, you might be forgiven for thinking that the only dogs to be abandoned in this country are fierce-looking or large and unruly dogs.

Recently, it seems there are some new additions in dog homes. Dogs Trust — the country’s largest dog welfare charity-says that in the past year over 400 “toy dogs” were handed in, a 44% increase on the year before.

“Toy dog” is the traditional term for all little dogs, but in recent years they’ve increasingly been referred to as “handbag dogs” after the ridiculous manner in which famous people like Paris Hilton carry them around in their $ 1,000 handbags, making these dogs the most wanted for impressionable teens. As the popularity of Hilton has waned, however, these dogs are being rudely tipped out of the handbags and given up to charity.

In spite of the sad ending that this trend brings for some of these dogs, it can only be a good thing if people become aware that the toy types are still dogs, not dolls to be carried around. If you really are prepared to stick with them, a small dog is just as capable of bringing joy without the need to dress him or her up. A large dog won’t sit on your lap while you read the papers or travel happily on the train with you. And a park full of pugs (哈巴狗) would be a happier and safer place than one full of teenage boys and badly trained large dogs. As Edith Wharton said, “My little dog - a heartbeat at my feet.”

Conventionally butterflies were regarded not as fascinating subjects for close observation but as symbols of shallowness. But Eleanor Granville treated them with scientific seriousness.

In her thirties, though suffering from a marriage where the husband was violent and even turned her family against her, Granville sought comfort by studying moths and butterflies. She travelled around the countryside with local girls, beating bushes to catch falling larvae (幼虫), and recruited her servants as assistants to collect specimens (样本). Because of unusual generosity in paying for a fine specimen, she soon accumulated a substantial collection of butterflies. After bringing larvae home, she meticulously logged their growth, providing some of the earliest detailed accounts of insect life cycles.

However, wandering the countryside with a collecting net was considered weird behavior for anyone back then, let alone a woman, and she was accused of going out dressed like a “gypsy”.

Besides her own extensive research, Granville exchanged letters and butterflies with other collectors. Another enthusiast William Vernon reported that she had owned “the noblest collections of butterflies, all English, which has shamed us”. She sent 100 examples to the Royal Society and also sent James Petiver, England’s most celebrated butterfly expert, boxes of carefully pinned butterflies, including several that had been previously unknown, and notably the one later named the Granville fritillary whose wings carry striking brown and yellow patterns, a species of special concern due to the decline of the total number under the influence of food loss and hotter weather.

Eleanor Granville remains the only British naturalist to have left their name to a native butterfly species. A pioneer in the study of entomology (昆虫学), Cranville helped make it an academic subject. Regretfully, only two moths and a butterfly of Granville’s precious specimens are still preserved in London’s Natural History Museum. Her name lives on the butterflies she loved.

A humpback, a kind of big whale, can weigh as much as 40 tons and reach 50 feet from nose to tail. That means they can easily overturn small boats and it can be a great trouble to anyone who jumps on the back of the animal.

But that was just what Sam Synstelien did when he saw a humpback in trouble in Central California’s Morro Bay. The animal was hopelessly tangled (缠绕) in a rope that was attached to a buoy (浮标).

Synstelien, along with his partner Nicholas Taron, had already tried reporting the poor animal to the U.S. Coast Guard — but they were told it would be hours before rescuers could come. Hours, the fishermen thought, this whale didn’t have. “If we wanted the humpback to survive we had to go to get it,” Taron later said. “We thought there was no other choice for the whale; we decided to go for it. We were so excited then. I don’t think we were that scared.”

It’s easy for Taron to say, of course. His role in the rescue was mostly in the cheering department. In the video, you can hear him shouting “Swim! Swim! Move! Just get it! Get it!” from the side of the boat while filming the entire rescue. “The humpback was just swimming in circles,” Taron said. “You could tell it was stressed and being held to the bottom.”

The very agitated whale didn’t take well to human intervention (介入) and even hit the boat with its huge tail with a lot of force. But Synstelien hung in there, and at last cut through the rope. And then with a sudden move, the humpback swam deep down beneath the waves. It wasn’t much of a thank you, but Synstelien and Taron were happy.