Chinese Pond Heron in September

Chinese Pond Heron (Ardeola bacchus, 池鹭).

Throughout the summer one sees these herons in their distinctive breeding plumage: a subdued chestnut-red from head to breast and with white wings under blue plumes. After the end of the breeding season ends,they adorn their winter whites and browns. This heron is one of two such birds, whom I regularly see fishing in Taozi Lake. In previously years, these herons were infrequently present there, and though fish and frog may think otherwise: they are a welcome addition to the scenic lake. Hopefully next Autumn the small lake will host even more fishing birds.

Time Flies

Nec unus dies ad nos stat: fugiunt omnes. Antequam uenit, abscedit. De hoc ergo die, ex quo loquimur, quantum iam fugit! Nec horam, in qua sumus, tenemus. Fugit et ipsa, uenit et alia, nec ipsa statura sed fugitura. Quid amas? Comprehende quod amas, tene quod amas, habe quod amas. Nec stat nec stare permittit. Omnis caro foenum et omnis claritas hominis ut flos foeni. Foenum aruit, flos decidit.

Not a single day stands still for us: they all fly away. Even before it arrives, it is gone. Even this day, which I am speaking about, how much has already flown away. And we cannot cling to the hour in which we are present. It flies and another comes, and that one will not remain but will fly away too. What do you love? Take hold of what you love, hold on to what you love,  keep what you love. But time neither stands still nor allows you to stand still. ‘All flesh is grass and all the glory of man is like a flower of grass. The flesh withers, the flower falls’ [1 Peter 1:24-25].

St. Augustine, Sermo 65/A.13. My translation.

Notes:
Sancti Aurelii Augustini Sermones in Matthaeum, ed. by Pierre-Patrick Verbraken (Turnhout: Brepols, 2008), p. 401. In many editions, the first sentence of this passage is given as: 'Non ad nos stat nec unus dies, nec unus dies ad nos stat, fugiunt omnes'. Verbraken correctly restores that first clause to the sentence prior: a great improvement through a simple change in punctuation.

Returning Home

Homer’s Odyssey
   From the description of the meeting between Ulysses and Telemachus it is plain that Homer considered it quite as dreadful for relations who had been long separated to come together again as for them to separate in the first instance. And this is about true.

Samuel Butler, The Note-Books of Samuel Butler, ed. by Henry Festing Jones (London: Jonathan Cape, 1930), p. 32.

Five-dot Sergeant

Five-dot Sergeant (Limenitis sulpitia, 残锷线蛱蝶).

Its wings were a little worse for wear: naturally nature photographers like to photograph pristine looking insects, though in the field, missing legs and antennae and tattered wings are common among these short lived creatures.

Rough Potato

Rough Potato (Cynanchum rostellatum, 萝藦).

A climbing subshrub found in many temperate and subtropical regions of the far east. Here climbing up the reeds and wild vegetation in the far West of Yanghu Wetland. The English name is inexplicable.

Books and Beer on Credit

But the end of my first year [at Oxford] saw me heavily in debt: so many barrels of beer, so many books, shelf upon shelf of them, which had nothing to do with work. At Blackwell’s bookshop credit seemed to a newcomer endless (though they liked a little bit sometimes on account), but drinks were ordered through the college buttery and appeared on battels, as college bills were called (there was no credit given there) [...]

Graham Greene, A Sort of Life (London: Slightly Foxed, 2010; 1971), p. 128.

Truth and Myth

When we translate we get abstraction—or rather, dozens of abstractions. What flows into you from the myth is not truth but reality (truth is always about something, but reality is that about which truth is), and, therefore, every myth becomes the father of innumerable truths on the abstract level. Myth is the mountain whence all the different streams arise which become truths down here in the valley; in hac valle abstractionis. Or, if you prefer, myth is the isthmus which connects the peninsular world of through with that vast continent we really belong to. It is not, like truth, abstract; nor is it, like direct experience, bound to the particular.

C.S. Lewis, 'Myth Became Fact', in Essay Collection and Other Short Pieces, ed. by Lesley Walmsley (London: HarperCollins, 2000), pp. 138-42 (p. 141).

Hybrid Trumpet Vine

Hybrid Trumpet Vine (Campsis × tagliabueana, 红黄萼凌霄).

There are two species of campsis in the world: one from China and the other from North America. Since the nineteenth century they have been hybridized by gardeners. The plant is a logical choice for Changsha gardens as the plant is hardy, endures the full sun, and stays in bloom from Spring till Autumn.

Shortleaf Spikesedge

Shortleaf Spikesedge (Cyperus brevifolius, 短叶水蜈蚣).

Persistent hot weather from late summer to early Autumn has reduced the Xiang river, which had been bloated by indefatigable Spring rains. Many mudflats have  reemerged and new vegetation is swiftly conquering the rich dark mud. There is plenty rough cocklebur, yellowcress, and various persicaria emerging from the soil, but for now it is shortleaf spikesedge that is gaining the upperhand, with copious new growths rising from the dense cracked earth.

Poor Dear Old Oxford

 ...Poor dear old Oxford! if I live till I am eighty, and were to enjoy all the happiness that the warmest wish could desire, I should never forget, or cease to look back with something of a painful feeling on the years we were together there, and on all the delights that we have lost; and I look forward with extreme delight to my intended journey, down to the audit in October, when I shall take a long and last farewell of my old haunts, and will if I possibly can, yet take one more look at Bagley Wood, and the pretty field, and the wild stream that flows down between Bullington and Cowley Marsh, not forgetting even your old friend, the Lower London Road. Well, I must endeavour to get some such associations to combine with Laleham and  but at present all is harsh and ruffled, like woods in a high wind, only I am beginning to love my own little study, where I have a sofa full of books, as of old, and the two verse books lying about on it, and a volume of Herodotus; and where I sit up and read or write till twelve or one o’clock.

Arthur Penrhyn Stanley, The Life and Correspondence of Thomas Arnold, D.D., 5th edn, 2 vols (London: B. Fellowes, 1844-1845), I, pp-58-59 [II. To Rev. George Cornish, Laleham, September 20, 1819].

Saturnia Pyretorum Pupa

Saturnia pyretorum (樟蚕). Pupa.

A large silk-moth chrysalis: floating in the breeze on a branch of a willow tree in Wangling Park. I often see the caterpillars crawling about on the ground in the forests, but I rarely see the pupae or adult moths: no doubt I am out in the wrong places and at the wrong times.

True Nobility

Omnibus nobis totidem ante nos sunt; nullius non origo ultra memoriam iacet. Platon ait neminem regem non ex servis esse oriundum, neminem servum non1 ex regibus. Omnia ista longa varietas miscuit et sursum deorsum 5fortuna versavit. Quis est generosus? ad virtutem bene a natura compositus. Hoc unum intuendum est: alioquin si ad vetera revocas, nemo non inde est ante quod nihil est. A primo mundi ortu usque in hoc tempus perduxit nos ex splendidis sordidisque alternata series. Non facit nobilem atrium plenum fumosis imaginibus; nemo in nostram gloriam vixit nec quod ante nos fuit nostrum est: animus facit nobilem, cui ex quacumque condicione supra fortunam licet surgere.

We all have had the same number of ancestors; there is no one whose ancestry does not extend beyond recollection. Plato says that every king springs from slaves and there is not a slave who does not descend from kings. All sorts have widely mixed together and fortune has turned them upside down. Who is well-born? He who by his nature is suited to virtue. That is what should be considered: otherwise if you call back to antiquity, there is no one who does not reach a time before which there is no information. From the first beginning of the world up to the present, we have been brought out of origins that were alternatively splendid and sordid. An atrium full of smoke-stained statues does make a man noble; no one lived for our glory and that which existed before us is not ours: the soul makes one noble, for it is allowed to rise above fortune from any circumstance.

Seneca, Epistulae, V.44.4-5. My translation.

Cyclidia Substigmaria

Cyclidia substigmaria (洋麻圆钩蛾).

A species of hook-tip moth, resting on a fern in Taohualing Park on Sunday. One of a great many butterflies and moths occupying the the overgrown grasses, weeds and forests.

Breakfast-Table

Life, within doors, has few pleasanter prospects than a neatly-arranged and well-provisioned breakfast-table. We come to it freshly, in the dewy youth of the day, and when our spiritual and sensual elements are in better accord than at a later period; so that the material delights of the morning meal are capable of being fully enjoyed, without any very grievous reproaches, whether gastric or conscientious, for yielding even a trifle overmuch to the animal department of our nature. The thoughts, too, that run around the ring of familiar guests, have a piquancy and mirthfulness, and oftentimes a vivid truth, which more rarely find their way into the elaborate intercourse of dinner.

Nathaniel Hawthorne, The House of the Seven Gable (New York: Signet Classics, 2010; 1851), p. 91.

Forgotten Songs

I have lived to see strange days. Long we have tended our beasts and our fields, built our houses, wrought our tools, or ridden away to help in the wars of Minas Tirith. And that we called the life of Men, the way of the world. We cared little for what lay beyond the borders of our land. Songs we have that tell of these things, but we are forgetting them, teaching them only to children, as a careless custom. And now the songs have come down among us out of strange places, and walk visible under the Sun.

J.R.R. Tolkien, The Two Towers (London: HarperCollins, 2007; 1954), p. 717.

Yellow-spined Bamboo Locust

Yellow-spined Bamboo Locust (Ceracris kiangsu, 黄脊竹蝗).

Autumn is the great season for grasshoppers and many are out from the river to the forests. As its name suggests: this species can be quickly identified its top yellow strip, which extends from vertex to protergum. I see them often in the Hunan forest, usually from about July to October. They are great devourers of bamboo leaves.

Autumn is Like Old Age

ἔοικε δὲ τοῦ ἐνιαυτοῦ περιιόντος οἷον γῆρας εἶναι τὸ φθινόπωρον· οὔπω γὰρ ἥκει τὸ ὑγρόν, οὐκέτι δὲ τὸ θερμὸν ἔρρωται

And as the year revolves, late autumn is like old age; for the wet season has not arrived, and the warm season is no longer strong

Plutarch, Moralia, VIII.736. My translation.

Redflower Ragleaf

Redflower Ragleaf (Crassocephalum crepidioides, 野茼蒿).

An annual herb, it grounds on the hills in Hunan (this one was near a forest path on Yuelu Mountain) and throughout much of the world. Its leaves and stems are edible and said to have a pine-like taste, and like many plants in Asteraceae it has a long history in medicine, and has been used to treat indigestion and to assist the healing of wounds in many cultures from Africa to South-East Asia.

Democracy and Literature

Le gouvernement démocratique est par sa nature, le plus favorable aux lettres: c’est pourquoi les sciences fleurirent à Athènes et à Rome, et se sont produites en grand à Londres. Si elles furent cultivées avec un rare succès dans l’ancienne Égypte, si elles le sont encore dans notre France, c’est qu’il peut y avoir des monarchies, où les abus de la domination étant proscrits, la liberté se montre avec tous ses avantages.

Democratic government is by its very nature the most favourable to belles-lettres : that is why the sciences flourished in Athens and Rome, and have flourished in London. If they were cultivated with rare success in ancient Egypt, if they are still cultivated in our France, it is because there can be monarchies where the abuses of domination are outlawed and liberty reveals all its advantages.

Jean Blanchet, L’homme éclairé par ses besoins (Paris: Durand le Neveu, 1764), p. 303. My translation.

Wandering Glider

Wandering Glider (Pantala flavescens, 黄蜻).

The world's most widespread dragonfly: it can be found on every continent except Antarctica. Every year they undertake a multi-generational migration over thousands of kilometres. This was was hunting in the open grass of Wangling Park.

A Sense of Fashion

Saki, The Unbearable Bassington (London: Jonathan Cape, 1936; 1912), p. 169:

some people are born with a sense of how to clothe themselves, others acquire it, others look as if their clothes had been thrust upon them.

Chinese Moon Moth Pupa and Caterpillar

Chinese Moon Moth (Actias ningpoana, 绿尾天蚕蛾). Pupa and Caterpillar.

I found them in a ditch on Yuelu Mountain and attempted to rescue them. Sadly their were too dried out before I had retrieved them: the bitter fortunes of small creatures.

Pinklady

Pinklady (Oenothera speciosa, 美丽月见草).

Another introduced flower—originally from North America— in now in bloom throughout Yanghu Wetland (and other parks throughout Southern China too no doubt). This flower is particularly attractive to insects and therefore a boon to bug-hunters.

Weltliteratur

Bernard Lewis, Islam and the West (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), pp. 128-29:

Just as our students should know something about the major classics of Western literature, so they should know something about the major classics of non-Western literature, because even the understanding of our own Western civilization is distorted and incomplete unless it is seen in a global and not merely in a regional and parochial context. After all, Western civilization did not spring like Aphrodite from the sea foam. It has been enriched by contributions from many different sources, including the Islamic world and even the remoter regions of Asia and Africa. Without a recognition of that diversity of origin, our education and our self-perception are flawed and falsified. The interdependence of human existence at the present time, the unity of human culture, which is becoming more of a fact every day in spite of the political and other differences that divide us, require such mutual study. I stress the word “mutual.” It is good that our students should study the Mu’allaqāt; it is also good that Arab students should study Beowulf.

Purpletop Vervain

Purpletop Vervain (Verbena bonariensis, 柳叶马鞭草).

A perennial, originally from South America, that is now in abundant bloom throughout Yanghu Wetland. I have found a few stray plants along the river as well.

Sacred and Profane

Michael A. Screech, Laughter at the Foot of the Cross (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2015), p. 25:

The acceptance of a mixture of the high and the low in Christian art means that you can come across what might seem to be obscenities or indecencies in the most surprising of places. The printers ornament on the first page of the first edition of Erasmus's Greek and Latin New Testament shows a woman with her legs wide apart, revealing all she's got. A learned attack on Erasmus by Lopis Stunica sports a printers’ ornament with a mannequin-pisse on one side and, on the other, a woman copiously, vigorously and vividly breaking wind. Are such things so routine that compositors set them up without a second thought, or is there a conscious mixture of the grossly earthly and the highly spiritual?

Tip-withering Bug Nymph

Tip-withering Bug (Anoplocnemis phasianus, 红背安缘蝽). Nymph.

A large sap-sucking insect, recently moulted and resting on a leaf in one of the still wild and overgrown patches on the edges of Yanghu Wetland. Like many of their fellow coreidae, they can be agricultural pests.

Literary Theory

‘Critical thinking #4: Daniel Mendelsohn’, Interview by David Wolf, Prospect, 5 Dec. 2013:

First of all, I think undergraduates should be kept away from Theory at all costs. I don’t think people should be allowed to even hear the word “theory” until they’re doing graduate work—for the very good reason that it’s impossible to theorise about texts before one has deep familiarity with them (not that that stopped anyone in the 1980s when I was in grad school). Undergraduates should be taught to have a clean appreciation of what texts say and how they say them, and learn how to write intelligently and clearly about that. If undergraduates had to have a model of criticism it ought to be popular criticism rather than traditional academic criticism.

Later on, when they’ve had experience in close reading, when they have a number of works under their belt, they can be introduced to theory—to the wide array of approaches to texts that they already will have “owned,” in some small way. That is exciting. But to flatter the vanity of 19-year-olds by letting them think they know about “theory” before they have read anything in real depth strikes me as preposterous. That very approach bred a generation of academics whose approach to literature is contemptuous.

Arctornis Cygna

Arctornis cygna (小点白毒蛾).

A lace-white tussock moth with bright orange fee, that can be found across south-east Asia. Albeit this is the only one I have seen on Yuelu Mountain: resting in a conspicuous spot by the roots of a tree.

More Innkeeper’s Hospitality

John Fothergill, An Innkeeper’s Diary (London: Chatto and Windus, 1934), p. 70:

At lunch there were two people, perhaps Colonial, a nice-looking woman and her husband, fat and bald save for some rust-coloured hair, rust freckles and a rust-coloured suit. He asked for Evian water, which I had said I hadn’t got, but I added, ‘You ought to try our Thame water—it’s supposed to be very good for –rusting tanks’; and seeing the quite accidental but apt application to the rusty fat gentleman I turned to the woman and said with a smile, ‘Rather a rude thing to say, wasn’t it?’

Female Sympetrum Eroticum

Sympetrum eroticum (竖眉赤蜻). Female.

While the male's abdomen is a vibrant red, the female's is a tigroid pattern of black and yellow. There are many of both sexes, around ponds and still waters throughout Changsha from late Summer to late Autumn.

My Head is as Full of Latin as an Egg’s Full of Oatmeal

Robert Greene (1558-1592), Plays, ed. by T.H. Dickinson (London: T. Fisher Unwin, [1909]), p. 296 [Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay (c. 1589), Act V, Scene I]:

MILES:
A scholar, quoth you! marry, sir, I would I had been made a bottle-maker when I was made a scholar; for I can get neither to be a deacon, reader, nor schoolmaster, no, not the clerk of a parish. Some call me a dunce; another saith my head is as full of Latin as an egg’s full of oatmeal [...]A scholar, quoth you!

Japanese Morning Glory

Japanese Morning Glory (Ipomoea nil, 牵牛).

In spite of its name, it is from the American tropics. I have seen it in gardens in and near Changsha, but only recently noticed (on account of the striking flowers) a few long climbing vines in the wilds of Yuelu Mountain.

Three Latin Nursery Rhymes

1. ‘CARMINA GYNACEI’ [Little Jack Horner]

In latebra sedit Horner (dixere) Johannem,
Parvus, edens natale, quietus! crustula christi,
Inseruit digitum—depromsit, callide! prunum,
Et laetus dixit—“Juvenis quam sum bonus ego.”

2. [Hey diddle diddle]

Nunc felem citharamque cano cum hei diddle diddle,
Lactiferam necnon vaccam qui saltat ad astra,
Atque canem parvum qui risit videre ludos,
Cochlear et patinam fugientem, horribile visu!

3. ‘Invocatio ad Mercurium et eius responsum.’ [Mary had a little lamb]

“Parvus, oves Bopeep infelix perdidit olim,
   Qua censes O Rex invenisset eas?”
“Permitte esse in eas ad ovilia mox redituras,
   Haud dubio caudas ducere pone suas.”

Anonymous, The Regrets of Memory (London: Henry Wix, 1840), pp. 101-103. Emended ‘inveniisset’. The first two are simple dactylic hexameters; the third has been rendered as an epigram in elegiac couplets,

Black Bulbul

Black Bulbul (Hypsipetes leucocephalus, 黑短脚鹎). White headed morph.

I have been infrequently spotting this bird since mid-July on Yuelu Mountain by my college. In fact I have been seeing and hearing birds in greater numbers and variety along my favourite footpaths throughout the mountain this season than I have over the past several years; a trend I hope will continue.

Liberals

John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton, Baron Acton (1834-1902), Lectures on the French Revolution (London: Macmillan, 1910), p. 19:

Yet all these fractions of opinion were called Liberal: Montesquieu, because he was an intelligent Tory; Voltaire, because he attacked the clergy, Turgot, as a reformer; Rousseau, as a democrat; Diderot, as a freethinker. The one thing common to them all is a disregard for liberty.

Angled Sunbeam

Angled Sunbeam (Curetis acuta, 尖翅银灰蝶).

A flashy orange and brown in flight, this lycaenid blends easily into different backgrounds: most likely why this is only the second one I have ever seen on Yuelu Mountain; in this case it was happily camouflaged on a granite block.

One of the Greatest Readers Alive

    ‘I am one of the greatest readers alive,’ said Herrick. ‘I have read all European modern literature, the enormous bulk of it. And I have read as much mediaeval literature as any man living. And I know my Greek and Latin. They were taught to us well when I was a boy.’
   ‘But you need not imply how they are taught now,’ said Bumpus.

Ivy Compton-Burnett, Pastors and Masters (London: Hesperus Press, 2009; 1925), p. 95.

Slender Skimmer

Slender Skimmer (Orthetrum sabina, 狭腹灰蜻).

A species of orthetrum ranging from south-east Europe to Australia, it has clearly adapted to a variety of different environments. In summer, there are often a few around the local lakes; towards the end of summer they are easy to find around Yuelu Mountain and in the nearby forests, wherever there are ponds or pools of water--and often vigorously chasing away other species of dragonflies!

Training and Talent

Neque enim ingenium sine disciplina aut disciplina sine ingenio perfectum artificem potest efficere.

For indeed neither raw talent without instruction nor instruction without raw talent can make a perfect artisan.

Vitruvius, De Architectura, I.3. My translation.

Juvenile Giant Asian Mantis

Giant Asian Mantis (Hierodula patellifera, 广斧螳).

A juvenile mantis (it was only 3cm in length, though awkward to measure on account of the upright position of its abdomen and its unwillingness to stay still), slowly strolling across the road and shaking like a wind-blown leaf.

The Professor's Dictionary

Isambard Wilkinson, Travels in a Dervish Cloak (London: Eland, 2017), p. 39:

One day, the Professor handed me a copy of his latest dictionary, Essential English Usage. ‘I’ve written it,’ he said, pausing to compress his lips, eyes twinkling with satire, ‘so that I might become very famous.’ I skimmed through it. Several phrases stood out: ‘…the moon’s lucent rays silvered the river’ ‘…she is a voluptuous dancer (Having large breasts and hips)’ ‘…Portly – having a rather fat body’ As I skimmed on, its deeper currents revealed it to be a Voltairian swipe against infamy. ‘Why does the feudal abase his servants in public?’ ‘Her landlord is a bit of an ogre’ ‘Who is not aware of the political and financial shenanigans among the political elite?’ The Professor asked if I would mind reviewing his dictionary for my newspaper. ‘The paper doesn’t usually review such books,’ I said. ‘But couldn’t you put a little something down on paper?’ he gently prodded. Later on he pressed a fresh edition of the book into my hands. He turned it over so I could see its back cover. There was my paper’s endorsement of his work ‘…this steadfast collection of definitions and usages is brightened by wit and literary flair’. He was very pleased. ‘You know,’ I said, in a confessional tone, ‘the review was never actually published in the paper.’ ‘No matter. No matter at all. That is far from the point,’ reassured the Professor.

Truth is Bold

Truth is bold and unsuspicious; want of self-reliance is the mark of falsehood.

John Henry Newman, The Idea of a University (New Haven & London: Yale University Press, 1996; 1873), p. 58.

Common Gull

Common Gull (Cepora nerissa, 黑脉园粉蝶).

Common, as its name suggests, at least throughout India, and South East Asia as far south as Indonesia. In China, they can be found in the southern coastal regions,  but for whatever reason, they are not much of a presence in the landlocked provinces. This one was in the Fuzhou National Park.

Immortality

Edwin Muir, An Autobiography (London: Methuen, 1964; 1940), pp. 51-52:

I do not have the power to prove that man is immortal and that the soul exists; but I know that there must be such a proof, and that compared with it every other demonstration is idle. It is true that human life without immortality would be inconceivable to me, though that is not the ground for my belief. It would be inconceivable because if man is an animal by direct descent I can see human life only as a nightmare populated by animals wearing top-hats and kid gloves, painting their lips and touching up their cheeks and talking in heated rooms, rubbing their muzzles together in the moment of lust, going through innumerable clever tricks, learning to make and listen to music, to gaze sentimentally at sunsets, to count, to acquire a sense of humour, to give their lives for some cause, or to pray.

Magpie Flat

Magpie Flat (Abraximorpha davidii, 白弄蝶).

A skipper butterfly with a fairly wide range over southern China. I have on the rare occasion seen one in Changsha, but this one was photographed while rit reposed for a moment in Fuzhou National Forest Park.

Lemon Migrant

Lemon Migrant (Catopsilia pomona, 迁粉蝶).

These pierid butterflies were scattered about through various parts of the Xiamen Botanical Gardens. They are found throughout India, southern China, and throughout south-east Asia down to Australia. As seasonal migrants, they navigate in groups up and down the rivers, to avoid cold weather.

Autumn

 vel cum decorum mitibus pomis caput
      Autumnus agris extulit,
ut gaudet insitiva decerpens pira
      certantem et uvam purpurae,
qua muneretur te, Priape, et te, pater
      Silvane, tutor finium!

when out in the fields Autumn raised his head adorned with mellow fruits, how he rejoices in plucking grafted pears and the grape which competes in hue with the purple with which he might repay you, Priapus and you, Father Sylvanus, guardian of the countryside!

Horace, Epodes, II.17-22. My translation.

Pearly Sea Anemone

Pearly Sea Anemone (Paracondylactis sinensis, 中华近瘤海葵).

Beaches are a liminal space between our world and the alien world that comprises most of our planet. Exploring the Xiamen beach at low tide at night there were many sea urchins and sea anemones, and other small creatures besides quickly and obscurely going about their business, present but barely observable.

Unfinished Work

Charlotte Wood, Stone Yard Devotional (Crows Nest: Allen & Unwin, 2023), p. 128:

I remembered an artist I knew in my twenties. He said an unfinished painting was a form of malignance. He said an artist must complete their work, good or bad, lest it make them sick.

Black-spotted Frog

Black-spotted Frog (Pelophylax nigromaculatus, 黑斑侧褶蛙)

A common true frog, I see them more often at night but sometimes by the edges of ponds and other still waters during the day. Some individuals are green, others grey or olive. Their bellies are always white. The name refers to their large noticeable dark spots, but they also have a distinct mid-dorsal line, and lines on each of their two dorso-lateral folds.

Old is Better Than the New

    There must be several men of spirit and experiences akin to mine who remember that little book-shop opposite Portland Road Station. It had a peculiar character; the books were of a solid kind—chiefly theology and classics—and for the most part those old editions which are called worthless, which have no bibliopolic value, and have been supplanted for practical use by modern issues. The bookseller was very much a gentleman, and this singular fact, together with the extremely low prices at which his volumes were marked, sometimes inclined me to think that he kept the shop for mere love of letters. Things in my eyes inestimable I have purchased there for a few pence, and I don’t think I ever gave more than a shilling for any volume. As I once had the opportunity of perceiving, a young man fresh from class-rooms could only look with wondering contempt on the antiquated stuff which it rejoiced me to gather from that kindly stall, or from the richer shelves within.  My Cicero’s Letters for instance: podgy volumes in parchment, with all the notes of Graevius, Gronovius, and I know not how many other old scholars.  Pooh!  Hopelessly out of date. But I could never feel that.  I have a deep affection for Graevius and Gronovius and the rest, and if I knew as much as they did, I should be well satisfied to rest under the young man’s disdain. The zeal of learning is never out of date; the example—were there no more—burns before one as a sacred fire, for ever unquenchable.  In what modern editor shall I find such love and enthusiasm as glows in the annotations of old scholars?
   Even the best editions of our day have so much of the mere school-book; you feel so often that the man does not regard his author as literature, but simply as text. Pedant for pedant, the old is better than the new.

George Gissing, The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987; 1903), pp. 32-33.

Rough-leaved Cats-Whiskers

Rough-leaved Cats-Whiskers (Rotheca myricoides, 蓝蝴蝶).

Native to mountains across Africa, with its striking dichasial cymes, it was one of the more beautiful summer flowers in the Xiamen Botanical Gardens.

People

Rachel Kushner, Creation Lake (New York: Scribner, 2024), loc.1189-1190:

Nature doesn’t bother me. What bothers me in nature is the possibility of people. I get a feeling in woods, no matter how remote they are, that someone could be around.

South China Collared Carpenter

South China Collared Carpenter (Xylocopa dejeanii ssp. alboxantha, 华南领木蜂).

This solitary member of a widely distributed species of carpenter bee was resting on a flower in the Fuzhou National Forest Park. As they are such fascinating creatures, I hope to photograph more bees over the next year, wherever I can find them.

Memory Loss

Everyone thinks that memory loss is the end, that it’s impenetrable.

Anne Michaels, Held (London: Bloomsbury, 2023), p. 84.

Dark Palm Dart

Dark Palm Dart (Telicota ohara, 黄纹长标弄蝶).

A grass skipper butterfly ranging from south Asia to northern Australia.This one was darting about among the wild beggarticks in the Fuzhou National Forest Park.

Summer Fruits

δενδρέων δὲ νομὸν Διόνυσος πολυγαθὴς
αὐξάνοι, ἁγνὸν φέγγος ὀπώρας.

May Dionysus joy-bringer swell the trees
with fruit, the pure light of the serotinal season.

Pindar. Fragment 153. My translation.

Notes:
ὀπώρα, the season between the rise of Sirius and the rise of of Arcturus ends tonight.

The Woods at Night

Robert Louis Stevenson, Further Memories (London: William Heinemann, 1924), p. 124 [Memories of Fontainebleau]:

The woods by night, in all their uncanny effect, are not rightly to be understood until you can compare them with the woods by day. The stillness of the medium, the floor of glittering sand, these trees that go streaming up like monstrous sea-weeds and waver in the moving winds like the weeds in submarine currents, all these set the mind working on the thought of what you may have seen off a foreland or over the side of a boat, and make you feel like a diver, down in the quiet water, fathoms below the tumbling, transitory surface of the sea. And yet in itself, as I say, the strangeness of these nocturnal solitudes is not to be felt fully without the sense of contrast. You must have risen in the morning and seen the woods as they are by day, kindled and coloured in the sun's light; you must have felt the odour of innumerable trees at even, the unsparing heat along the forest roads, and the coolness of the groves.

Turk's Cap Cactus

Turk's Cap Cactus (Melocactus ssp?, 花座球属).

I found it growing through a crack in a wall, in one of the more rundown parts of Hulishan Cannon Fort in Xiamen. It is not a native species to China, and one wonders how it got here; When did its progenitor come from the Americas and how did its seems come to that particular crack between two sturdy stones?