Greater Blue Skimmer (Orthetrum melania, 异色灰蜻). Female.
Another 'blue' dragonfly in which the females are in fact black and yellow. There are many of them out now, both by the lakes and throughout the forests, vigilant destroyers of nasty mosquitoes.
Itaque amicitia semper prodest, amor aliquando etiam nocet.Seneca the Younger, Epistles, XXXV.1. My translation.
So friendship is always beneficial; love rather is sometimes harmful.
Deielia Phaon (异色多纹蜻).
One of the smaller dragonflies of the summer ponds, the largest fall a little short of 5cm in length. The females have alternating black and yellow vertical stripes on their breasts, and a row of yellow vertical spots in the centre and on both sides of the back of abdominal segments 2 to 7. Some females are fully yellow and black, while others have also have some shade of powdery blue.
quid sentire putas? quid credis, amice, precari?Horace, Epistles, I.18.108-110. My translation.
sit mihi quod nunc est, etiam minus, et mihi vivam
quod superest aevi, si quid superesse volunt di;
sit bona librorum et provisae frugis in annum
copia, neu fluitem dubiae spe pendulus horae.
What do you think I think about? What do you think, my friend, that I pray for? That I may keep what I have or even less, and to live for myself for whatever part of life remains for me, if the gods will it to remain; may I have an ample supply of books and provisions to last through the year; and may I not waver, hanging on to the hope of the fickle hour.
Lamprosema tampiusalis (黄环蚀叶野螟).
A fairly common moth on Yuelu Mountain: resting in the afternoon by one of the remaining woodland streams, I saw many of them fluttering about or perching on the moist rocks.
ἀλλὰ καὶ ὣς ἐθέλω καὶ ἐέλδομαι ἤματα πάνταHomer, Odyssey, V.219-224. My translation.
οἴκαδέ τ᾽ ἐλθέμεναι καὶ νόστιμον ἦμαρ ἰδέσθαι.
εἰ δ᾽ αὖ τις ῥαίῃσι θεῶν ἐνὶ οἴνοπι πόντῳ,
τλήσομαι ἐν στήθεσσιν ἔχων ταλαπενθέα θυμόν:
ἤδη γὰρ μάλα πολλὰ πάθον καὶ πολλὰ μόγησα
κύμασι καὶ πολέμῳ: μετὰ καὶ τόδε τοῖσι γενέσθω.
Yet even so every day I desire and long to reach my home and to see the day of my return. And if some god would break me on the wine-red sea, I shall endure it, as I hold in my breast a soul that endures great afflictions: as before this I have suffered much and endured much in waves and in war; let this be one of those thing.
Oriental Blue Dasher (Brachydiplax chalybea, 蓝额疏脉蜻).
The female of the species is yellow with distinctive black markings. Sometimes this dragonfly is called a rufous-backed marsh hawk or a yellow-patched lieutenant, the latter name is most appropriate for both genders.
Tomás de Iriarte (1750-1791)
‘El gusano de seda y la araña’
Trabajando un Gusano su capullo,
La Araña, que texía á toda prisa,
De esta suerte le habló con falsa risa
Mui propia de su orgullo:
¿Qué dice de mi tela el seor Gusano?
Esta mañana la empecé temprano,
Y ya estará acabada á mediodía.
Mire qué sutil es, mire qué bella....
El Gusano con sorna respondía:
Usted tiene razon: así sale ella.
While a Worm was working on his cocoon,Tomas de Iriarte, Fabulas literarias, ed. by Jaime Fitzmaurice-Kelly (Oxford: OUP, 1917; 1782), p. 5. My translation.
The Spider, who was weaving fast,
Spoke to him in mock jest,
What does Mr. Worm have to say about my web?
I started early this morning
And it will be finished by noon.
See how delicate it is, behold how beautiful....
The Worm replied sarcastically:
You are right: that is how it comes out.
Green-tinge Spiderlily (Hymenocallis speciosa, 蜘蛛兰).
People have brought any different new plants to Yuelu Mountain over thousands of years. This Caribbean plant grows along the wall of one of the war memorials, and a few renegade plants have spread elsewhere nearby.
The few ponds around Yuelu Mountain often contain vociferous frogs and toads throughout the summer. This frog however was out on a quiet trekking across a dry hillside. It is some member of the Fejervarya genus, perhaps a Hong Kong rice-paddy frog (fejervarya multistriata, 泽陆蛙), though the taxonomic classification of this and related species has not been fully settled.
The common world of children, that is something entirely different. A lonely child in his game forgets himself and everything that is round him, and his oblivion is beyond time. Into the common game of children wider spheres are drawn, and their mutual world is governed by the laws of the seasons. No amount of boredom will make boys play marbles in summer. You play marbles in spring when the frost goes; that is a grave and indisputable law, like that which commands the snowdrops to flower, or mothers to make Easter cakes. Only later can you play at touch or hide and seek, while the school holidays are the time for adventure and escapades: into the field to catch grasshoppers, or to bathe on the sly in the river. No self-respecting fellow will ever feel in summer the urge to make a bonfire; that’s not done until towards the autumn, at the time when kites are flown. Easter, summer holidays, and Christmas, fairs, village wakes, and feasts, these are important dates and big watersheds in time. The year of children has its routine, its ritual is governed by the seasons; a lonely child plays with eternity, while a pack of children play with time.Karel Čapek, Three Novels, trans. by M. and R. Weatherall (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1948), p. 331 [An Ordinary Life, 1934].
Hildebert of Lovardin (1056-1133)
Quadam autem nocte, dum fatigatis artubus modico sopore vir Dei consuleret, videre visus est decubantium sub capite suo serpentium multitudinem, caeteraque diversi generis reptilia, quibus ille perturbatus, somnum continuare non poterat. Dehinc amoto pulvinari, librum Maronis reperit, eoque projecto, somnum duxit tranquillum. Apta rei visio, cum nihil aliud quam quaedam venena sint fabulae poetarum.Vita Sancti Hugonis, 18 in Patrologia Latina, vol. 159, col. 872A-B. Cited in The Virgilian Tradition: The First Fifteen Hundred Years, ed. by Jan M. Ziolkowski & Michael C.J. Putnam (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2008), p.897. Jan M. Ziolkowski’s translation.
What is more, one night, as the man of God attended to his wearied limbs by sleeping a little, he seemed to see a multitude of snakes lying under his head, as well as other reptiles of various sorts. Distressed by them, he was unable to continue sleeping. Then, after removing his pillow, he found a book of Virgil’s poetry. Upon tossing it aside, he slept peacefully. The vision is well suited to the matter, since the inventions of the poets are nothing if not venomous.
Problepsis albidior (白眼尺蛾).
I spotted this geometer moth, resting in plain view, during an evening walk in Wangling Park. The last time I noticed one was May of last year, its orange and silver spots are memorable.
Butterfly Flutterer (Rhyothemis fuliginosa, 黑丽翅蜻).
A diminutive dragonfly, which is sometimes called the 'butterfly dragonfly'. The Chinese name means 'black-winged butterfly: whether is wings appear black or a shade of iridescent blue depends on which angle. For me they are a twilight creature, as while I might spot one or two during the day, they appear in more significant numbers around the lotus ponds in the evenings when the day begins to cool, and they disappear again before it is dark.
Ὧν ἡ σοφία παρασκευάζεται εἰς τὴν τοῦ ὅλου βίου μακαριότητα, πολὺ μέγιστόν ἐστιν ἡ τῆς φιλίας κτῆσις.
Of all the means wisdom procures sublime happiness throughout the entirety of one's life, the most important by far is the acquisition of friends.
Diogenes Laertius, Vitae Philosophorum, X.1.148 [27]. My translation.
Print is predictable and impersonal, conveying information in a mechanical transaction with the reader’s eye.Ruth Ozeki, A Tale for the Time Being (Edinburgh: Canongate, 2013), p. 12.
Handwriting, by contrast, resists the eye, reveals its meaning slowly, and is as intimate as skin.
Notobitus meleagris (黑竹缘蝽).
Leaf-footed bugs, enjoying the relatively cool shade of moso bamboo culms in Wangling Park. Adults and nymphs were out today, and I found some eggs on the underside of a leaf nearby.
Adult, nymph & eggs:
Small Cross Spider (Argiope minuta, 小悦目金蛛).
In Spring, I frequently observed a kogane spider (argiope amoena) in Wangling Park. I have not seen it since, but today in the same park, i found two similar argiope minuta, laying in wait for their afternoon meals.
Crimine quo merui, iuvenis, placidissime divum,Statius, Silvae, V.4.1-3. My Translation.
quove errore miser donis ut solus egerem,
Somne, tuis?
For what crime, youthful Sleep the kindest of the gods, or what mistake have I alone deserved to be so wretched and to lack your gifts?
Burmagomphus sowerbyi (索氏缅春蜓).
An uncommon clubtail here in Changsha. I saw one by the Xiang river last August, first mistaking it for a common flangetail, before realizing, after it had flown away, that it was something rarer. Fortunately, I have just seen another one, almost at the same spot as last year.
玉洞仙壇長冷落，真墟岩竇色常新。Notes:
可憐城里悠悠者，不識瀟湘四季春。
The Xian altar in the jade cave has long been left desolate,
The Zhenxu rock cave is always a fresh sight.
I pity those who spend their time in the city,
They do not know the endless spring of Hunan.
Zhenxu: a grotto on Yuelu Mountain: 洞真墟福地.
The anonymous poet complains about the neglect of the sacred places on Yuelu Mountain and pities those who spend too much time in the city.
全唐詩續拾卷五十六 [Complete Tang Dynasty Poems], Volume 56, poem 174. Chinese Texts Project. My translation.
Japanese Rhinoceros Beetle (Trypoxylus dichotomus ssp. dichotomus, 双叉犀金龟). Female.
This afternoon Yuelu mountain was hot, breezeless and dry and activity clustered around its few still trickling streams. Where there was water there were birds, including both a mother and fledging Amur paradise flycatchers. There were also many flies and moths (I left them undisturbed) and at one stream, a large solitary beetle, climbing along the wet rocks. The female rhinoceros beetle lacks the male's cephalic horn, and she was also missing one leg, though that did not greatly reduce her mobility; insects are often battered in the wild, but often seem more so in the dry season of summer.
Joachim Ringelnatz
'Ein ganzes Leben'
»Weißt du noch«, so frug die Eintagsfliege
Abends, »wie ich auf der Stiege
Damals dir den Käsekrümel stahl?«
Mit der Abgeklärtheit eines Greises
Sprach der Fliegenmann: »Gewiß, ich weiß es!«
Und er lächelte: »Es war einmal —«
»Weißt Du noch«, so fragte weiter sie,
»Wie ich damals unterm sechsten Knie
Jene schwere Blutvergiftung hatte?« —
»Leider«, sagte halb verträumt der Gatte.
»Weißt du noch, wie ich, weil ich dir grollte,
Fliegenleim-Selbstmord verüben wollte?? —
Und wie ich das erste Ei gebar?? —
Weißt du noch, wie es halb sechs Uhr war?? —
Und wie ich in die Milch gefallen bin?? — —
Fliegenmann gab keine Antwort mehr,
Summte leise, müde vor sich hin:
»Lang, lang ist’s her — — lang — — —«
In the evening, the Mayfly asked:Joachim Ringelnatz, Die Gedichte, ed. by Fritz & Katinka Eycken with Jabob Winter (Berlin: Haffmans Verlag bei Zweitausendeins, 2009), pp. 662-63 [1933]. My translation.
“Do you remember how I stole from you
That cheese crumb on the stairs?
With the detachment of an old man,
Her Husband-fly said, “Indeed, I remember!”
And he smiled, “That was a long time now —”
“Do you remember”, she asked
”How under my sixth knee
I had that severe blood poisoning?” —
“Unfortunately,” said her husband half in a dream.
“Do you remember, how, because I resented you,
I wanted to kill myself upon the the flypaper?? —
And how I gave birth to the first egg?? —
Do you remember, when it was half past five?? —
And how I fell into the milk?? — —
The Fly-husband answered her no more,
Humming softly, languidly to himself"
“It's been a long, long time — — long — — —”
Sympetrum eroticum (竖眉赤蜻). Male.
A summer meadowhawk, in July they frequent both the lakes and the woods of Yuelu Mountain. The males are bright red. Their Chinese name refers to black spots on their heads that look like raised eyebrows. The are common in China and Japan where they are called natsu-akane, the 'red dragonfly of summer'.
Aestas ab exilioCarmina Burana 74.31-40. My translation.
redit exoptata,
picto ridet gremio
tellus purpurata.
Miti cum susurrio
suo domicilio
gryllus delectatur.
Hoc canore iubilo,
multiformi sibilo
nemus gloriatur.
Long-awaited summer has come from exile, the violaceous earth smiles in her painted lap. The cricket, in his home, amuses himself with a soothing whisper. With this melodious song, with this multi-voiced hissing, the forest rejoices.
Baohuang Cave (抱黄洞) on Yuelu Mountain.
According to the weathered and faded signs, it is sacred to the Taoists because Zhang Baohuang
(张抱黄) and Deng Yu (邓郁) studied and ascended to heaven here. There were once
Taoist monasteries nearby, and later a pavilion, but they have long been destroyed.
Another folktale recalls a snake lived here and stretched its tongue
to form a bridge to trick its victims. The snake was killed by Tao
Kan and the Fairy Crane.
Walter de la Mare
'The Moth'
Isled in the midnight air,
Musked with the dark's faint bloom,
Out into glooming and secret haunts
The flame cries, 'Come!'
Lovely in dye and fan,
A-tremble in shimmering grace,
A moth from her winter swoon
Uplifts her face:
Stares from her glamorous eyes;
Wafts her on plumes like mist;
In ecstasy swirls and sways
To her strange tryst.
Creeping Lilyturf (Liriope spicata, 山麦冬).
It is distinguishable from similar liriope muscari by its rhizomatous roots and more humble flower spike, which does not grow much higher than its leaves. In Traditional Chinese Medicine, it is used nourishing Yin, and treating heartburn and unsteady nerves. It is also grown as groundcover or to prevent hillside erosion, but this one was growing on its own, wild.
Thagria (片叶蝉属).
In spite of their vivid appearance, I have not been able to discern the exact species.
In late June there were hundreds of these curious insects clustered together throughout the forests of Yuelu Mountain. They are not yet gone, but their numbers are fewer: the once crowded bushes now only expose several leafhoppers and soon it will be impossible to find any at all.
'The Ant'
Ogden Nash
The ant has made herself illustrious
By constant industry industrious.
So what? Would you be calm and placid
If you were full of formic acid?
Every day, more and more cicadas join the treetop chorus. Signs of their rising are new gaping holes in the sun-dried soil and the exuviae that litter the vegetation.
This is the exuvia of an eastern horse cicada (Cryptotympana atrata, 黑蚱蝉); outside the forests they are the most common.
Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker's Creek (Norwich: Canterbury Press, 2011; 1974), p. 66.
Nature is, above all, profligate. Don’t believe them when they tell you how economical and thrifty nature is, whose leaves return to the soil. Wouldn’t it be cheaper to leave them on the tree in the first place? This deciduous business alone is a radical scheme, the brainchild of a manic-depressive with limitless capital. Extravagance! Nature will try anything once. This is what the sign of the insects says. No form is too gruesome, no behavior too grotesque. If you’re dealing with organic compounds, then let them combine. If it works, if it quickens, set it clacking in the grass; there’s always room for one more; you ain’t so handsome yourself. This is a spendthrift economy; though nothing is lost, all is spent.
Pied Skimmer (Pseudothemis zonata, 玉带蜻. Male.
Summer is the season for dragonflies. There are of these medium-sized pied skimmers around by the lakes and streams. These are mostly black except for part of the abdomen, which is white on males and yellow on females.
Local sayings:
蜻蜓低飞要下雨。
When dragonflies fly low, it will rain.蚂蚁搬家要下雨。
When ants move their nests, it will rain.
My translations.
"Mr. Barnes," answered the count, "all I want out of wines is to enjoy them."Ernest Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises (New York: Signet Classics, 2022; 1926), p. 59.
Lysimachia fortunei (星宿菜).
This loosestrife, with its green spires of star-like flowers, rises from the wet soil in March and blooms in summer. There are fewer wild flowers in July, but there are always a few of this on damp patches on the hills and mountains or by the waters.
Hawai'i's snails are far from being alone in this regard. Indeed, this is the situation in which a growing number of other animals and plants find themselves today. Around the world, many individuals and their species live out their final days under human care in strange environments like zoos and captive breeding facilities, from giant tortoises in the Galápagos Islands and white rhinos in Africa to the diverse forest birds and snails of Hawai'i. With so many species at risk of extinction , as the situation gets more dire bringing all or some of the remaining individuals into these (relatively) safe spaces becomes an appealing option. But for many of them there will be no release. Reviews of reintroduction programs generally show that the majority of them fail for a variety of reasons, including an inability to secure suitable release habitat. In these cases, maintaining captive animals becomes less an act of conservation than one of slowly drawing out an extinction. Unable to halt the ongoing destruction of our time , the Anthropocene has become a period in which both the lives and deaths of other species are increasingly being shaped, more or less wisely and consciously, by the actions of (some) humans.Thom van Dooren, A World in a Shell: Snail Stories for a Time of Extinctions (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2023), p. 189.
What does hope look like in times like these ? What does it mean to continue to care for species in the face of ongoing , unrelenting processes of loss? Lesley Head reminds us that hope does not require optimism. We do not need to feel or believe that something is likely to come about in order to hope for it . Rather, hope is a practice of the possible.
It may be, then, that translation from one language into another may lay bare for us something of the very productive mechanisms of textuality itself—may figure as some kind of model or paradigm of the very secret of writing.Terry Eagleton, ‘Translation and Transformation’, Stand, 19/3 (1977), 72-77 (p. 73).
Green Flash (Artipe eryx, 绿灰蝶). Female.
The hot dry season has started. Yesterday I walked in Wangling park, which was littered with fallen scarab beetles and stunned eastern horse cicadas; the latter I think were affected by gardeners watering the trees more than the heat. In the woods there were plenty of live insects to see: I was particularly taken by this butterfly, which I don't see very often, although in late fall and winter one often comes across gardenia fruits with holes burrowed into them by their larvae.
Formosana pacifica (太平丽管螺).
On Yuelu mountain, they are a fairly common door snail: if the weather is wet enough, I can usually spot them on the trees or moss. Now that the hot dry season is starting, I don't suspect I will be seeing many more until next Spring.
Legati specimen conspicuum Stanlius est noui;Translated by T.W. Melluish.
quidquid terra creat, gramen alit, celat humus, sagax:
reges scit Latii, scit ueterum proelia temporum,
quo sint gesta die, seu Marathon, siue sit Actium.
uix artem numeri Pythagoras ipse magis sapit;
non problema fuit quin breuiter Stanlius explicet.
fullonum tabulas litterulis hic Babyloniis
scribit; nulla sagi praeterit hunc bulla Carataci.
picturaque catus, Parrhasium Zeuxide separat,
ranarumque chorus quos sonitus fuderit haud latet.
quod quaeris? segetes, bestiolas, resque metallicas,
dux exercituum Stanlius est ut specimen nouum.
et cum quid iaculum fundaue sit dicere quiuerit,
uestalique dolis callidior uirgine bellicis,
ipas militiae primitias coeperit adsequi,
uix haerebit equo dux melior—namque fateberis.
Oriental Flower Beetle (Protaetia orientalis, 凸星花金龟).
Common summer beetle, usually they are copper or metallic green or something in between those two colours. They are fairly distinctive, but one can distinguish them from other scarab beetles by the narrow white line on either side of the pronotum and the white spots on their backs (dorsal surface). They appeared in droves during the wet part of summer and their bodies litter the ground later in the dry heat. Fungivorous, but they seem to frequent a wide range of flowers and ripened fruits.
A.A. Milne (1882-1956), Winnie Ille Pu, trans. by Alexander Lenard (London: sumptibus Methuen, 1994; 1958), pp. 52-53:
Crustulum, crustulum, crustulum cru
Cano aenigmata, canis ac tu?
Crustulum, crustulum, crustulum crum
Cerebrum meum est fatiga-tum.
Crustulum, crustulum, crustulum cru
Volitant aves, dic volitas tu?
Crustulum, crustulum, crustulum crum
Cerebrum meum est fatiga-tum.
Crustulum, crustulum, crustulum cru
Sibilo bene, dic sibilas tu?
Crustulum, crustulum, crustulum crum
Cerebrum meum est fatiga-tum.
A.A. Milne, 'Cottleston Pie'
Cottleston Cottleston Cottleston Pie,
A fly can't bird, but a bird can fly.
Ask me a riddle and I reply
Cottleston Cottleston Cottleston Pie.
Cottleston Cottleston Cottleston Pie,
Why does a chicken? I don't know why.
Ask me a riddle and I reply
Cottleston Cottleston Cottleston Pie.
Cottleston Cottleston Cottleston Pie,
A fish can't whistle and neither can I.
Ask me a riddle and I reply
Cottleston Cottleston Cottleston Pie.
Common Bluebottle (Graphium sarpedon, 青凤蝶).
As soon as the heavy rain left, hundreds of bluebottle butterflies became active. Here are three enjoying a drink in one of the many cool impromptu streams still flowing down Yuelu Mountain.
Frank Rich, ‘In Conversation Chris Rock’, New York Magazine (1 December 2014):
[Rich:] Is it possible that they’re just angry, whether it’s anger at Obama or Washington in general, and they just want to lash out? If you’re angry, you don’t rationally consider what’s in your self-interest.
[Rock:] Maybe. But we had Bush for eight years. They saw what that was. Apparently a lot of people want to go back to that. A lot of people think rich people are smart.
Unfortunately, nature is very much a now-you-see-it, now-you-don’t affair. A fish flashes, then dissolves in the water before my eyes like so much salt. Deer apparently ascend bodily into heaven; the brightest oriole fades into leaves. These disappearances stun me into stillness and concentration; they say of nature that it conceals with a grand nonchalance, and they say of vision that it is a deliberate gift, the revelation of a dancer who for my eyes only flings away her seven veils. For nature does reveal as well as conceal: now-you-don't-see-it, now-you-do.Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker's Creek (Norwich: Canterbury Press, 2011; 1974), p. 18.
Serrognathus titanus ssp. platymelus (中华扁锹甲). Male.
A giant stag beetle, this subspecies is common throughout China and is fairly easy to find on wet (but not heavily raining) days in summer in Changsha. They are lugubrious and slow: carefully plotting their path with their jointed feather-tipped antennae before moving ahead. The male is much larger than the female and has large antler-like jaws, with several small teeth along the edge and two big teeth on either side towards towards the back.
Diversibipalium virgatum.
A small land planarian. The species has recorded in China and is described as brownish-orange with five dark dorsal and lateral stripes, including a median dorsal stripe running onto the headplate. It was moving across a footpath on the south-east part of Yuelu Mountain after a month of heavy rains.
οἱ τέττιγες μουσικοί, οἱ δὲ κοχλίαι ἄφωνοι· χαίρουσι δὲ οἱ μὲν ὑγραινόμενοι, οἱ δὲ ἀλεαινόμενοι· ἔπειτα προκαλεῖται τοὺς μὲν ἡ δρόσος καὶ ἐπὶ ταύτῃ ἐκδύνουσι, τοὺς δ᾽ αὖ διεγείρει ἀκμάζων ὁ ἥλιος καὶ ἐπ᾽ αὐτῷ ᾁδουσι. τοιγαροῦν εἰ βούλει μουσικὸς καὶ εὐάρμοστος ὑπάρχειν ἀνήρ, ἡνίκ᾽ ἂν ἐν τοῖς πότοις ὑπὸ τοῦ οἴνου δροσισθῇ ἡ ψυχή, τότε αὐτὴν μὴ ἔα προιοῦσαν μολύνεσθαι· ἀλλ᾽ ἡνίκ᾽ ἂν ἐν τοῖς συνεδρίοις ὑπὸ τοῦ λόγου διαπυρωθῇ, τότε θεσπίζειν καὶ ᾁδειν τὰ τῆς δικαιοσύνης κέλευε λόγια.Epitectus, Fragment 26. My translation.
Grasshoppers are musical; snails are voiceless: the latter take delight in being wet and the former in being warm. Thereafter, the dew calls the snails to crawl out, while on the contrary the sun at its height rouses the grasshoppers to sing. Accordingly, if you wish to be a musical and harmonius person, when bedewed with wine at drinking-bouts, do not allow one’s soul to go forth and be polluted; but when in gatherings of reason, then bid her speak from inspiration and sing oracles of justice.
You cannot make a man by standing a sheep on its hind-legs. But by standing a flock of sheep in that position you can make a crowd of men.Max Beerbohm, Zuleika Dobson or an Oxford Love Story (London: William Heinemann, 1949; 1911), p. 107.
Red-rumped swallow (Cecropis daurica, 金腰燕).
Since early spring there have been large numbers of them hunting around the river and lakes. There are now fewer and fewer of them about. Last year, at this time, this one was injured his wing flying into a tree by the foot of Yuelu Mountain. I moved it where it would be more protected from people and cats, managed to give it some water and watched it until it went to sleep; sadly nature took its course.
A strange mushroom found in Wangling Park on June 25 last year, and is still a mystery to me. My field notes were not very complete, but indicate that mushroom in the centre of picture was 14 cm in height with a 5.5 cm pileus and a firm stipe 1.5 cm in the middle and 2.5 cm at its base. There was no significant aroma and the spore print was white. The genus cantharocybe was suggested on inaturalist but there are no similar observations recorded in this part of China. Cantharocybe virosa is found in southeast Asia growing near cocos nucifera, but there are no such trees in Wangling Park.
[item 33]
of an a.b.c.Steven W. May, Henry Stanford's Anthology: an Edition of Cambridge University Library Manuscript Dd.5.75 (New York; London: Garland, 1988), p. 44.
This a.b.c. you do read
but little do prevail
vnless yt you take heede
well whipt shalbe your tail.
Bradybaena (巴蜗牛属).
Hopefully our recent wet weather will bring out some interesting snails. This medium-sized snail was exploring the gardens near Yuelu Academy: it is some species of Bradybaena, but I am not sure what kind; there is always mysteries in nature.
That they are pleasing, all who ever buyFrom John Masefield, ‘Shopping in Oxford’ in Poems by John Masefield (London: William Heinemann, 1946; 1923), pp. 870-871.
In Oxford shops can surely testify:
Of all the shops I name or do not name
I and their other buyers can make claim
That, of our purchased parcels laid in pile
Each one was rendered friendly, with a smile,
A charming word or jest that gave a grace
Of silver to the penny’s commonplace,
So that a spirit companied the thing
Borne in the paper package tied with string,
So that it seemed a thing not bought and sold
But given, out of friendship and worth gold.
It is a pleasant pastime to go eyeing
Where things attract and tempt you into buying;
The dustless shining things which subtly wait
Yourself, the willing fish for this the bait.
Among these verses I have written down
The fruits of shopping about Oxford town,
Each with the happy memory of faces
Who greet me friendly at the customed places,
And of the streets in which the windows shine,
That are the magnets to these friends of mine;
For here, new pleasures purchasers attend,
They find the looked-for treasure and a friend.
I seek few treasures, except books, the tools
Of those celestial souls the world calls fools.
Happy the morning giving time to stop
An hour at once in Basil Blackwell’s shop,
There, in the Broad, within whose booky house
Half England’s scholars nibble books or browse.
Where’er they wander blessed fortune theirs,
Books to the ceiling, other books upstairs.
Books, doubtless in the cellar, and behind
Romantic bays where iron ladders wind,
And in odd nooks sometimes in little shelves,
Lintot’s and Tonson’s calf-bound dainty twelves.
Pink-winged Grasshopper (Atractomorpha sinensis, 短额负蝗).
The most common local atractomorpha, in the summer and autumn they are vivacious during the day. They are dimorphic: most commonly bright green, but on Yuelu Mountain and other hills I sometimes find grey-brown ones, though these are far less common.
He was incurably sympathetic.Penelope Fitzgerald, Offshore (Boston: Mariner, 1998l 1979), p. 12.
In the country, the rain would have developed a thousand fresh scents, and every drop would have had its bright association with some beautiful form of growth or life. In the city, it developed only foul stale smells, and was a sickly, lukewarm, dirt-stained, wretched addition to the gutters.Charles Dickens, Little Dorrit (Oxford University Press, 1997; 1855-1857), pp. 30-31.
The rain poured down on London so hard that it seemed that it was dancing spray, every raindrop contending with its fellows for supremacy in the air and waiting to splash down. It was a deluge. The drains and sewers were overflowing, throwing up—regurgitating, as it were—the debris of muck, slime, and filth, the dead dogs, the dead rats, cats, and worse; bringing back up to the world of men all those things that they thought they had left behind them; jostling and gurgling and hurrying toward the overflowing and always hospitable River Thames; bursting its banks, bubbling and churning like some nameless soup boiling in a dreadful cauldron; the river itself gasping like a dying fish. But those in the know always said about the London rain that, try as it might, it would never, ever clean that noisome city, because all it did was show you another layer of dirt. And on this dirty night there were appropriately dirty deeds that not even the rain could wash away.Terry Pratchett, Dodger (London: Doubleday, 2012), pp. 1-2.
Slender Green-winged Grasshopper (Aiolopus thalassinus, 绿纹蝗).
This grasshopper can be found in wetlands and near rivers across Europe, Africa, Asia, Australia and some of the Pacific islands too. From mid-June until around October, these adult grasshoppers can be easily spotted along the Xiang river.
The Feast of the Nativity of St. John the Baptist is assigned to the eighth day before the Kalends of July (24 June) so that it falls six months before the celebration of Christmas. The proximity to the Summer Solstice is suggestive of the words of St. John the Baptist in the Gospel: ‘He must increase, but I must decrease’ (John 3:30). The summer festivals celebrated on this feast day have diminished in the English world. William Turner (c. 1510-1568) mentions one lost English tradition, of children making wreaths from the flowers of the fields:
CYANUS [Centaurea cyanus, Cornflower]William Turner, Libellus de re herbaria novus (1538), ed. & trans. by Mats Rydén, Hans Helander & Kerstin Olsson (Uppsala : Almqvist & Wiksell, 1999), pp. 60-61 & pp. 64-65.
Cyanus a Gallis teste Ruellio blauium dicitur. Hanc ego herbam arbitror esse quam Northumbria uocat a Blewblaw aut a Blew bottell. Hanc corollis intexunt pueri eo tempore quo Baptistae sacra peraguntur.
Cyanus, according to Ruellius, is called Blavium by the French. I think that this is the herb which [people in] Northumberland call a Blewblaw or a Blew bottell. Children entwine this [herb] to wreaths when the Baptist’s holy day is celebrated.
GITHAGO siue NIGELLASTRVM [Agrostemma githago, Corncockle]
Githago, siue Grece mauis, pseudomelanthion, est herba illa procera, que in tritico flavescente existit. Inde corollas apud Morpetenses meos pueri in die divi Baptistae texunt. Vulgus appellat Coccle aut pople.
Githago, or Pseudomelanthion if you prefer it in Greek, is the well-known tall herb which appears in ripening wheat. On the day of Saint John the Baptist children among my Morpethians make wreaths of it. The common people call it Coccle or Pople.
Eristalis cerealis (灰带管蚜蝇).
Rainy weather provides a good opportunity for sorting out some old photos. I photographed this drone fly in early May but they are always around in warm weather and as generalist pollinators appear anywhere in Changsha there are flowering plants. Their water-born larva, called 'rat-railed maggots' have a long breathing appendage, mistakenly labelled a tail.
sic igitur vivitur; quotidie aliquid legitur aut scribitur...Cicero, Letters, 9.26.4. My translation.
This is how I live my life: every day I read or write something...
Scopula propinquaria (花边灰姬尺蛾).
The past week has been mostly rain and it looks like there will be nothing but more rain for the near future. And in this humidity it is difficult to keep the fog away from my camera lens. Today I walked around Wangling Park: I did not see much for my effort and could photograph less, but I did at least manage to capture this member of the geometridae family.
Henry E.G. Rope (1880-1978), ‘Blessed John Fisher’
June, 1914
In that grey head and forehead sorrow-scor’d,
Those strong dark eyes with tender love alight,
The face of one that liveth at the height
Of the o’erwhelming trust of his liege Lord,
Radiant with sovran grace on him outpour’d,
With steadfast calm unearthly benedight:
Chosen to bear the fiercest of the fight
With hell’s leagu’d powers o’er all the land abroad.
Whose swords are blunted by his only crook
Who stood alone nor left his flock their prize—
Is this intrigue’s demeanour? This his look
Over whose soul ambitions tyrannize?
O fools, who cannot read an open book!
O jaded wits, false judgements, purblind eyes!
Henry E.G. Rope, Soul’s Belfry and Other Verses (Church Stretton: The Stretton Press, 1919), p. 59.
Juvenile Chinese Blackbird (Turdus mandarinus, 乌鸫).
Every summer there are great numbers of juvenile blackbirds around the parks. They are not very shy when they are young and they are invariably ugly, but in a cute way.
all cynicism is so damned sentimentalCyril Connolly, The Rock Pool (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1954; 1936), p. 131.
Snow Fungus (Tremella fuciformis, 银耳).
Wet summer weather means fungus. This one is more common in a soup than in the wild, and I have not often seen it on Yuelu Mountain (perhaps due to foragers), but there is was, amidst a pile of decomposing branches.
ὑμεῖς δ᾽ ἐς ἀλλόφυλον ἐλθοῦσαι χθόναAeschylus, Eumenides 851-52. My translation.
γῆς τῆσδ᾽ ἐρασθήσεσθε· προυννέπω τάδε.
If you travel into some land of foreigners,
I warn you, you shall come to love their country.
Eurystylus coelestialium (眼斑厚盲蝽).
The ramie plants on Yuelu Mountain are always brimming with life. I have not seen many of this particular true bug, but there being so many insects about it is easy for a species to be overlooked.
