Edward Step

Some of his books on flowers were illustrated by his daughter, Mabel Emily Step, including the 1905 pocket guide entitled Wayside and Woodland Blossoms.

When Arthur Mee produced the first edition of his famous Children's Encyclopædia – initially as a fortnightly series from 1908 until 1910 – Edward Step agreed to contribute the articles on plant life.

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.

[4] However, he wrote a chapter in the same book on the giant tortoise of the Galapagos Islands that included a reference to Charles Darwin, but without a mention of evolution.