Brazil is where the nuts come from. But also, welcome thence to the legless lizard and the miniature woodpecker. Not to exclude eight unknown fish (except to other fish), a horned toad and a mystery mammal.

Out of Brazil, always something new. Today we report 14 new species that have been discovered in that prolific mother of species. Somewhere in the rainforest a brilliant butterfly, hitherto a stranger to entomological man, the classifier, flaps its wings. Does it set off a tornado in Texas, as chaos theory wildly suggests? How does the legless lizard get about? Does not that slither turn it into a snake? Why does such a tiny woodpecker not fall beak-first down its hole?

For the layman, these are puzzling questions; but not beyond all conjecture. The scientists will describe, classify, name, explain, compare, contrast and preserve in a museum. That is their job. Best first guess is that the lizard lost its legs for slithering across its sandy home, while its snout sand-wedged a path. The tiny woodpecker appears simply to enjoy solitude. It could fly to more populated country, but it doesn't choose to.

The legless lizard is an antidote to current ecogloom. On this apparently crowded planet, Man frets (rightly) about the decline of the species. But in fact there are more species alive today than were dreamed of by Noah. Thousands of beetles and other bugs are waiting to be classified. The origin of the species is still going on all around us, beneath our very noses, from Brazil to Bethnal Green, as ecology changes and Nature adapts. Man is the measure of all things. And he has plenty left to measure on his prolific planet.