Welcome to a carnival unlike anything that you have ever read about, visited, or even imagined before. Here, before your very eyes, you will encounter bizarre, anomalous creatures of every conceivable (and inconceivable!) kind--a veritable menagerie of cryptozoological mysteries to dazzle and delight, tantalize and terrify. For this is Mirabilis--a realm of marvels, wonders, miracles...and monsters! Peer through the shadows and see what you may. Was that scuttling horror a spider the size of a puppy? Did that fallen tree trunk suddenly sprout a pair of alligator jaws? Was that a living toad that leapt out of that split-asunder block of stone? Did those flowers abruptly put forth wings and fly away as tiny birds? Behold Trunko, the hairy marine elephant-bear that supposedly battled whales off the coast of South Africa almost a century ago. Look around in every direction and witness the very last giant lemurs brought to you from the rainforests of Madagascar, the very same unicorn that was once encountered by Julius Caesar, dinosaur-sized crocodiles from the swamps of the Congo, the elephantine harpoon-tusked sukotyro of Sumatra, gargantuan prehistoric beavers resurrected in modern-day North America, illusive Germanic horned hares and elusive Liberian micro-squirrels, a giant sea snail with antlers and paws from the Sarmatian Sea and a veritable whale-fish from a forgotten Swedish lake, a vanished striped mystery steed from Iberia, enormous toothless freshwater sharks from South America, flying turtles from China and a hippoturtleox from Tibet, sea dragons and pseudo-pterodactyls, and the world's only known tusked megalopedus. Let us not tarry even a moment longer. The miracles and marvels of Mirabilis await you. ABOUT THE AUTHOR Born and still living in the West Midlands, England, Karl P.N. Shuker graduated from the University of Leeds with a Bachelor of Science (Honors) degree in pure zoology, and from the University of Birmingham with a Doctor of Philosophy degree in zoology and comparative physiology. He now works full-time as a freelance zoological consultant to the media, and as a prolific published writer. Shuker is currently the author of 19 books and hundreds of articles, principally on animal-related subjects, with an especial interest in cryptozoology and animal mythology, on which he is an internationally recognized authority, but also including a poetry volume. In addition, he has acted as consultant for several major multi-contributor volumes as well as for the world-renowned Guinness Book of Records/Guinness World Records (he is currently its Senior Consultant for its Life Sciences section); and he has compiled questions for the BBC's long-running cerebral quiz Mastermind. He is also the editor of the Journal of Cryptozoology, the world's only existing peer-reviewed scientific journal devoted to mystery animals. Shuker has travelled the world in the course of his researches and writings, and has appeared regularly on television and radio. Aside from work, his diverse range of interests include motorbikes, the life and career of James Dean, collecting masquerade and carnival masks, quizzes, philately, poetry, travel, world mythology, and the history of animation. He is a Scientific Fellow of the prestigious Zoological Society of London, and a Fellow of the Royal Entomological Society. He is Cryptozoology Consultant to the Centre for Fortean Zoology, and is also a Member of the Society of Authors."

Item consists of reviews and articles chiefly written in 2000.

Synthetic food colors are widely used in different types of food stuffs in India as well as in the world. Changing lifestyles across the globe have transformed food habit patterns. The instant and processed foods (junk foods) are mainly used in a variety of attractive “Synthetic food colors” by its manufacturers. The natural food pigments were extracted from the Mirabilis jalapa flowers, and leaf of Nyctaginaceae family. The extracted natural food pigments were exposed to different pH, temperature and various quality analysis. The result showed that the different parameters express as Mirabilis jalapa pigment as high stability natural food colouring agent. In the present study also an attempt has been aimed to study the Extraction, Titrable acidity, Ascorbic acid content, Phytochemical analysis and adulteration by Chromatographic methods.

Mirabilis jalapa Linn belongs to the family Nyctaginaceae and is a large herbaceous plant grown in gardens throughout India. Mirabilis jalapa Linn is widely used in conventional medicine in many parts of the world for the treatment of various diseases viz. virus inhibitory activity, anti-tumor activity, etc. Very few reports are available on the architecture of pollen grains, image analysis, Antimicrobial activity, pharmacognostic and phytochemical nature of Mirabilis jalapa Linn. The present project contains the following objectives: 1. Staining of pollen grain and observation of meiotic stages. 2. Phytochemical studies of 3 different colored plant varieties of M.jalapa by TLC. 3. Comparative Evaluation of Antimicrobial Activities of plant leaf Extract (3 different colored varieties) of Mirabilis jalapa. 4. Image analysis of data got by experimentation using software.

Mirabilis jalapa a perennial, herbaceous, bushy plant that reaches stature heights of mostly 1 meter, rarely up to 2 meters, in height. It may also be grown as an annual, especially in the temperate zone. The single-seeded fruits are spherical, wrinkled and black upon maturity, having started out greenish-yellow. The stems are thick, full, quadrangular with many ramifications and rooting at the nodes. The posture is often prostrate. A curious aspect of M. jalapa is that flowers with different colors grow simultaneously on the same plant. Additionally, an individual flower can be splashed with different colors. Flower patterns are referred to as sectors (whole sections of flower), flakes (stripes of varying length), and spots. A single flower can be plain yellow, red, magenta, pink, or white, or have a combination of sectors, flakes, and spots. Furthermore, different combinations of flowers and patterns can occur on. Artificial seeds are the living seed-like structure which are made experimentally by a technique where somatic embryoids derived from plant tissue culture are encapsulated by a hydrogel and such encapsulated embryoids behave like true seeds if grown in soil and can be used as a substitute of natural seeds. different flowers of the same plant. The viability of the artificial seeds depend on several factors related to conditions of storing the seeds and parts of the flower from which the explant is obtained. The protoplast is prepared from several parts like flower, leaf, stem, root, buds and meristem. These explants are grown in different concentrations of sucrose like 5%, 10%, 15%, 20%, 25%, 30%, 35%, 40%, 45%, 50%. The production of synthetic seeds are also studied in this experiment.

Mirabilis jalapa is one of the medicinally important shrubs used in traditional medicine, belongs to the family Nyctaginaceae and commonly called as 4’O clock plant. M. jalapa plant extract contains biologically active substances that exhibit microbicidal or microstatic effects against various diseases causing microbes. The plant has high medicinal properties such that the indigenous people of Mexico use it to cure many infirmities including dysentery, diarrhoea, muscular pain and abdominal colic. It is used for the treatment of various infections. Parts of the plant are used to combat dyspepsia and other digestive disorders. The extract of yellow, red color flower variety and green leaf of M. jalapa can be used as natural food color instead of artificial color. The main advantage of using these plant extracts are they have high antimicrobial and have high antioxidant activity. It has the capacity to resist the bacteria like Bacillus, Salmonella, Klebsiella, E coli, Staphylococcus with the help of Silver nanoparticles. The plant has also proved to possess antibacterial, antiviral, and antioxidant activity. Nanoparticles are defined as particulate dispersions or solid particles with a size in the range of 10-1000nm. The drug is dissolved, entrapped, encapsulated or attached to a nanoparticle matrix. Depending upon the method of preparation, nanoparticles, nanospheres or nanocapsules can be obtained. Nanocapsules are systems in which the drug is confined to a cavity surrounded by a unique polymer membrane, while nanospheres are matrix systems in which the drug is physically and uniformly dispersed. Antioxidants are used as food additives to help guard against food deterioration. Exposure to oxygen and sunlight are the two main factors in the oxidation of food, so food is preserved by keeping in the dark and sealing it in containers or even coating it in wax, as with cucumbers. However, as oxygen is also important for plant respiration, storing plant materials in anaerobic conditions produces unpleasant flavours and unappealing colors. Consequently, packaging of fresh fruits and vegetables contains an ~8% oxygen atmosphere.