Edward Step

Edward Step FLS (1855–1931) was the author of many popular and specialist books on various aspects of nature. He wrote many books on botany, zoology and mycology, which were published between 1894 and (posthumously) 1941. Some of his books on flowers were illustrated by Mabel Emily Step (his daughter, b. 1881), including the 1905 'pocket guide' entitled Wayside and Woodland Blossoms. He also contributed to the periodical, Science-Gossip: An Illustrated Monthly Record of Nature, Country Lore & Applied Science.

When Arthur Mee produced the first edition of his famous Children's Encyclopædia – initially as a fortnightly series from 1908 until 1910 – he asked Edward Step to contribute the articles on plant life, to which Step agreed. There were numerous illustrations, but they consisted exclusively of monochrome photographs, attributed to Edward Connold.

Step created a myth of a mouse-eating grasshopper in his book 'Marvels of Insect Life (1915), where he wrote, "In the British Museum (Natural History) there is a specimen of one of the largest known locusts, which was received from a missionary in the Congo Free State a few years ago, who had taken it in the act of feasting upon a mouse it had caught. ... The locust in question does not confine its attention to mice; large spiders, beetles and other insects, and probably small nestling birds serve it equally for food." In fact, no grasshopper is known to feed on mice.