Departure of a Dignitary from Middelburg, by Adriaen van de Venne, 1615. Rijksmuseum, D. Franken bequest, Le Vésinet.

Migration

Volume XIV, Number 3 | April / May 2022

Miscellany

Each year from late August to October, thousands of male Oklahoma brown tarantulas travel through the prairieland of southeast Colorado in search of a mate. The spiders, which reach sexual maturity around the age of ten, often survive just one migration season. “Once they wander and mate, it gets cold,” said one entomologist. “They’ll be dead by Christmas.”

History in its broadest aspect is a record of man’s migrations from one environment to another.

—Ellsworth Huntington, 1919