Natural History

I don't know about you, but I've found the week between Christmas and New Year's to be a real challenge in recent years. Not only are the kids home from school, but in their minds, the real holiday (Christmas) is over.Most of Santa's offerings have been checked out, tested and either accepted or rejected.I have been involved in preparing frozen fruit slush with our McDonald's Frozen Snack Maker, growing fascinating Magic Rocks, creating a mobile of our solar system, and making really slimy bugs with the Creepy Crawlers set.I can hardly wait to get to work with the McDonald's hamburger and cookie makers.

Dinosaurs don't exactly need the boost. But Steven Spielberg's just-released "Jurassic Park" movie will undoubtedly bolster their popularity -- who knows, maybe even beyond Barney.Besides the burgeoning supply of generic dinosaur merchandise, "Jurassic Park" items are invading stores and even museums across the country.Here's where you can go for more about these prehistoric creatures plus products for dinosaur-crazed children and adults.Area dinosaursBeltsville was a popular stomping ground for dinosaurs, says Michael Brett-Surman, a paleontologist with the Smithsonian Institution.

WASHINGTON -- To spiders, scorpions, termites and othe creepy crawlies, Orkin Pest Control is the enemy. But to hundreds of insects at the Smithsonian Institution's insect zoo, the Orkin Man is a friend.The Atlanta-based company contributed $500,000 for renovation of the popular exhibit at the Museum of Natural History, which will reopen in September as the "O. Orkin Insect Zoo" -- after Otto Orkin, the company's founder.The gift highlights the Smithsonian's funding dilemma. The sprawling complex's needs are outstripping its public funding, but the search for alternative resources is raising accusations of a sellout.

SUITLAND -- Thousands of artifacts housed at a Smithsonian Institution storage facility here were waterlogged and possibly ruined by a small tornado that struck the complex early Monday morning.Historical furniture, insect collections, canoes, totem poles and sculptures were among items Smithsonian officials identified as damaged by the storm, which struck eight of 27 buildings at the suburban Washington site, two of them severely.Officials said it would take several months to determine the cost of restoring the items.

One of America's most popular vacationlands is the Southwest, where a salubrious climate, stunning scenery, American Indian cultures, lively indigenous cuisine and a variety of pleasant accommodations have made a hot spot for fun and adventure.But few know that within the confines of four Southwestern states lies a magic circle of scenic wonders tied together by a 1,400-mile, all-weather highway system. Known as the "Grand Circle," this spherical route connects, and gives easy access to, the greatest concentration of national parks and monuments in the United States.

The holiday feast is as much a visual as a gustatory treat, a time for extra fussing to make the table festive. We are inspired not only by the pleasure of gathering family and friends around the table, but by feelings of stability and warmth.No matter what your favorite style for a holiday table, a little tradition is a necessary ingredient. It can be present in a ritual carried on from one generation to the next; in the china, silver, glasses, linens or tabletop decorations inherited from loved ones or chosen during travels to favorite places; or in dinnerware whose patterns boast some sort of history.

FOR A MOMENT in Monday night's fourth episode of PBS' "Land of the Eagle," you can imagine what the Great Plains used to be like, when literally millions of buffalo roamed across this flat grassland, sharing its bounty with herds of elk and antelope, grizzly bears punctuating the scenery with their ferocious magnificence, perhaps 500,000 humans living within this immense acreage, the golden eagle surveying it all from above.The tableau must have been as stunning as any available today on the savanna of Africa.

AT THE SMITHSONIAN, THE CORN is even higher than an elephant's eye.The famous stuffed African bush elephant, whose huge bulk presides over the rotunda of the National Museum of Natural History in Washington, is no longer its main focus of attention. Positioned behind the beast, but looming above it, is a stately columned portal in vivid shades of red, yellow and blue, with a revolving globe set in its curvy Spanish-style lintel. It's a stunner -- especially when one notices that the portal's colorful face, with its zigzag and checkerboard patterns, has been executed in ears of corn.

BULLY FOR BRONTOSAURUS: Reflections in Natural History. By Stephen Jay Gould. Norton. 540 pages. $22.95. IN 1862 England, Thomas Henry Huxley chose a simple piece of chalk to illustrate to the working men of Norwich the facts underlying the theory of evolution and the antiquity of the Earth. Some years earlier in his famous juvenile Christmas lectures at the Royal Institution, Michael Faraday employed a common candle to bring to the young people of London the essence of the chemistry of combustion.

You could call it a four-day biking trip along the Chesapeake & Ohio Canal.Or you could call it a lesson in wildlife biology, Maryland history and maybe even small-town sociology. With plenty of physical education thrown in, and enough camping-related grubbiness to earn a merit badge or two.The three of us dubbed it "The C&O Cycle a Go-Go," to match our high-spirited and easygoing pedaling expedition from Cumberland in Western Maryland to the outskirts of Washington. The occasional mudhole or sore muscle notwithstanding, this self-guided excursion was amazingly simple to arrange and enjoy, for several reasons.