Heredity in Man

A wildlife film with a difference: it has A Message for any humans in the house. "The squirrel in the tree, the fox below, the birds, insects, all know that a time of plenty will not last forever". Austerity-stricken wartime viewers can learn from their economical feeding habits. An entertaining hybrid of public information and natural history from the makers of wildlife series Secrets of Life. Released in the BFI boxset Ration Books and Rabbit Pies: Films from the Home Front.

This film probes the perennial miracle of the growth of a seedling, the seasonal upsurge of life in a forest giant, and the mysterious alchemy of a single leaf. Presented in magnified dimension through time-lapse photography and animated diagrams, a maple leaf and segments of a tree serve to illustrate the physiological processes that go on in all plants.

A brief essay on the ecology of a forest along the Laurentian Shield, in Quebec.

The film takes us to the North of England to follow the migration of the black-headed gull down to London. There, the narrator asks viewers to "listen to their gossip", before demonstrating the bird’s flight in slow motion. We see a polecat feasting on gull eggs, and then a man collecting the eggs for human consumption, with the film telling us that they are considered a “delicacy” in London. Indeed, according to the British Trust for Ornithology, around 300,000 gull’s eggs were sold every year in Leadenhall Market in London during the 1930s, when London Visitors was made.

This peek behind the scenes at Kew Gardens in the 1940s was part of the ever-eccentric Secrets of Life series. Arcadian images of tranquil greenery, attended to by a discreet army of gardeners, make it hard to believe WWII was raging in the background. We're also treated to a spot of the series’ trademark time-lapse nature photography and charming narration - one plant described as "rather like an Italian having an argument with his hands".

Go with the flow: to gentle but spellbinding effect this innovative natural history film glimpses marine life astride rising tides at Millport on the Isle of Cumbrae. Urchins, lugworm, weaver-fish and crabs are the shy-but-elegant stars coaxed onto the screen (with the assistance of Millport’s local research station) for this archetypal edition of Gaumont-British Instructional’s 1930s cinema series Secrets of Life.