Geography of New Caledonia a refugium, in effect a biological "Noah's Ark", an island home to both unique living plants and animals and also to its own special fossil endowment. Birds such as the crested and almost flightless kagu (French, "cagou") "Rhynochetos jubatus", whose closest relative may be the distantly related sunbittern of South America, and plants such as "Amborella trichopoda", the only known member of the most basal living branch of flowering plants, make this island a treasure trove and a critical concern for biologists and conservationists. The island was home to horned fossil turtles ("Meiolania mackayi") and terrestrial fossil crocodiles ("Mekosuchus inexpectatus")
What a piece of work is a man What a piece of work is a man "What a piece of work is man!" is a phrase within a soliloquy by Prince Hamlet in William Shakespeare's play of the same name. Hamlet is reflecting, at first admiringly, and then despairingly, on the human condition. The soliloquy, spoken in the play by Prince Hamlet to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern in Act II, Scene 2, follows in its entirety. Rather than appearing in blank verse, the typical mode of composition of Shakespeare's plays, the speech appears in straight prose: Hamlet is saying that although humans may appear to think and act "nobly"