Oriental Blue Dasher

Oriental Blue Dasher (Brachydiplax chalybea subsp. flavovittata, 蓝额疏脉蜻). 

They are simply larger and more elegant than the other dragonflies swarming around the lakes and still waters and they stay close to their rock, reed or lily-pad perches.

You Can Tell a Man by his Gait

Can you discern the character of someone by their manner of walking?  Some preliminary notes on identifying devils, goddesses, clerks, the unchaste, the great and the lowly by their paces:
 
Proverbs 6:12:

A man that is an apostate, an unprofitable man, walketh with a perverse mouth

Ecclesiasticus 19:26-27:

A man is known by his look, and a wise man, when thou meetest him, is known by his countenance. The attire of the body, and the laughter of the teeth, and the gait of the man, shew what he is.

Aristotle, Nic. Eth. 1125a:

καὶ κίνησις δὲ βραδεῖα τοῦ μεγαλοψύχου δοκεῖ εἶναι
('A slow walk is expected of a great-souled man')

Seneca, Epistulae, LII.12:

impudicum et incessus ostendit et manus mota et unum interdum responsum et relatus ad caput digitus et flexus oculorum
('The unchaste man reveals himself in his walk, his hand gestures, an off remark he makes in passing, how he touches his head with his finger and the turn of his eyes')

Juvenal, II.15-17:

                                             verius ergo
et magis ingenue Peribomius; hunc ego fatis
inputo, qui vultu morbum incessuque fatetur.
('Peribomius is franker and more honest; I charge the fates that his face and his walk betray his sickness.')

Petronius, Satyricon, 126:

nec auguria novi nec mathematicorum caelum curare soleo, ex vultibus tamen hominum mores colligo, et cum spatiantem vidi, quid cogitet scio
('I know nothing of augury and I am unaccustomed of studying the stars of the astrologers, but yet I can infer the manners of men from their faces, and I can tell what a man thinks from watching him walk')

Johannes de Irlandia, The Meroure of Wyssdome, 3 vols (Edinburgh : Blackwood, 1926-1990), I, p. 163:

His luking, his ganginge and all his hevingis ware mare plesand þan ony man can tell ore wndirstand

William Shakespeare, The Tempest, Act IV, Scene 1.101-2:

                              Highest queen of state,
Great Juno comes; I know her by her gait.

Vergil, Aeneid, I.405:

et vera incessu patuit dea
('and the true goddess [Venus] was revealed by her walk')

John Milton, Paradise Lost, IV.869-871:

And with them comes a third of regal port,
But faded splendour wan; who by his gait
And fierce demeanour seems the Prince of Hell

Anonymous, ‘The Quill Driver’ (1-4) in The Regrets of Memory (London: Henry Wix, 1840), pp. 73-77 (p. 73):

Behold the Clerk, whose stiff, uneasy gait
   Proclaims his calling, from all other men,
Move swiftly onward to his daily fate,
   And haste still faster as the clock strikes ten.

My translations.

Paddy Frog

Paddy frog (Fejervarya multistriata, 泽陆蛙). Note the taxonomy of this and related species is not entirely settled.

Hot summer nights are bursting with nature. During the day, swarms of dragonflies are flying everywhere adjacent to water. At night it is moths and flying beetles. This paddy frog was wandering near the river in the city of Xiangtan (湘潭), blending into the concrete as well as he would into a natural setting.

Coffee Tips?

 Lydia Maria Francis Child (1802-1880), The American Frugal Housewife: Dedicated to Those Who Are Not Ashamed of Economy (New York: Samuel S. & William Wood, 1841), pp. 82-83: 

   As substitutes for coffee, some use dry brown bread crusts, and roast them; others soak rye grain in rum, and roast it; others roast peas in the same way as coffee. None of these are very good; and peas so used are considered unhealthy. Where there is a large family of apprentices and workmen, and coffee is very dear, it may be worth while to use the substitutes, or to mix them half and half with coffee; but, after all, the best economy is to go without.
   French coffee is so celebrated, that it may be worth while to tell how it is made; though no prudent housekeeper will make it, unless she has boarders, who are willing to pay for expensive cooking.
   The coffee should be roasted more than is common with us; it should not hang drying over the fire, but should be roasted quick; it should be ground soon after roasting, and used as soon as it is ground. Those who pride themselves on first-rate coffee, burn it and grind it every morning. The powder should be placed in the coffee-pot in the proportions of an ounce to less than a pint of water. The water should be poured upon the coffee boiling hot. The coffee should be kept at the boiling point; but should not boil. Coffee made in this way must be made in a biggin. It would not be clear in a common coffee-pot.
   A bit of fish-skin as big as a ninepence, thrown into coffee while it is boiling, tends to make it clear. If you use it just as it comes from the salt-fish, it will be apt to give an unpleasant taste to the coffee: it should be washed clean as a bit of cloth, and hung up till perfectly dry. The white of eggs, and even egg shells are good to settle coffee. Rind of salt pork is excellent.
   Some people think coffee is richer and clearer for having a bit of sweet butter, or a whole egg, dropped in and stirred, just before it is done roasting, and ground up, shell and all, with the coffee. But these things are not economical, except on a farm, where butter and eggs are plenty. A half a gill of cold water, poured in after you take your coffee-pot off the fire, will usually settle the coffee.
   If you have not cream for coffee, it is a very great improvement to boil your milk, and use it while hot.

Pale Smartweed

Pale smartweed (Persicaria lapathifolia, 酸模叶蓼).

There are many different plants that comprise the entangled mass of vegetation living on the muddy soil of the Xiang river (湘江), wherever they are left free to grow. Of them, pale swartweed is more prominent in the late summer when it is full of flowers, arachnids, and insects. Its other names include 'curlytop knotweed' and 'willow weed' and though I prefer the latter, it invites confusion as it may also refer to other species of persicaria.

Great Literature is Often Obscure

The classical scholar Isaac Casaubon (1559-1614) was responding to the charge that Persius’s satires are often too difficult to understand:

quid? solus hic obscurus? non etiam optimus quisque attentissimum et πολυμαθέσατον requirit lectorem? Non commemorabo Thucydidis τὰς περινοήσεις, τὰς ἐμπεριβολὰς, τὰ γλωσσηματικὰ καὶ ξένα, τὰ ἀνακόλουθα et similia multa quibus obducta caligo ingens illius historiae. silebo Platonis τὰς ἀκράτους καὶ ἀπηνεῖς μεταφοράς, de quibus Longinus. hoc solum dicam, maximarum difficultatum ea potissimum scripta esse plena, quae omnium seculorum docti homines maxime sunt admirati. quis Pindarum intelligeret aut Aristophanem absque eorum interpretibus foret? quis Graecis literis doctus choros Tragicorum inoffenso pede percurrit? Theocriti τὰ σκληρά notant veteres critici: neque indignentur.  
 
What of it? Is Persius alone obscure? Does not every great writer require a most attentive and polymath reader? Shall I not recall Thucydides’ subtleties, amplifications, foreign idioms, strange phrases, anomalous inflections and many similar things which enshroud his history in a great mist? Shall I be silent concerning the excessive and harsh metaphors of Plato, which Longinus wrote about? Let me say this: the writings of the best authors, which learned men from all ages have most admired, are especially wrought with difficulties. Who would have understood Pindar or Aristophanes without the commentators? Who is so learned in Greek literature that he would run through the choruses of the tragic poets without skipping a beat? The ancient critics marked the difficult parts of Theocritus, but they were not upset by them.

Notes:
Persius, Satirarum liber, ed. by Isaac Cassaubon (Paris: Apud Ambrosium & Hieronymum Drouart, 1605). fols. e1v-e2r. Emended γλωοσηματικὰ. My translation.

Compare with this passage from one of Casaubon’s manuscripts, cited by Anthony Grafton and Joanna Weinberg:

Obscuritas prophetarum. Nemo leviter prophetarum scripta attigit quin eorum obscuritatem animadverterit. huius rei multiplex est causa. Ac caussam quidem caussarum investigare cue Deus OPT. MAX. uoluerit sic eos loqui non est tenuitatis nostra: quibus persuassimum est, ita Deo visum quia ita optimum: ita esse optimum quia sic Deo visum. Sed propriores huius obscuritatis causae multae possunt adnotari, aliae e rebus ipsis profiscuntur: quae altae, sublimes, interdum etiam futurae: ut de iis non potuerint prophetae nisi obscure loqui. aliae sunt in ipso dicendi genere: quod sane rebus est accommodum ὑψηλόν ὑψηλαῖς. Itaque quicquid est apud Longinum et alios rhetoras quod τὸ ὕψος τῷ λόγῷ concilet, id omne reperietur in prophetarum sciptis luculentissimae expressum.
 
No one who has ever even touched the writings of the prophets in passing has failed to notice their obscurity. The reasons for it are many. It is not for one of my low station to investigate the fundamental reasons why God wished them to speak in this manner. I am firmly convinced that God decided thus because it was best, and it is best because God decided thus. But certain intermediate causes of their obscurity can be noted. Some derive from their subject matter. The matters they deal with are lofty, sublime, and sometimes in the future, so that the prophets had to discuss them obscurely. Others have to do with their style, which is clearly the right one for their subject: a sublime style for sublime things. Whatever Longinus and other theorists of rhetoric say about how one attains sublimity in speech will all be bound, brilliantly expressed, in the writings of the prophets.

“I have always loved the holy tongue”: Isaac Casaubon, the Jews, and a forgotten chapter in Renaissance scholarship (Cambridge, Mass.; London: Belknap, 2011), p. 107.fn140 [Bod MS Casaubon 51, 19 recto].

Guenther's Frog

Guenther's Frog (Sylvirana guentheri, 沼蛙). 

It is always a delight to find amphibians in the wild. This frog was lurking midday around the waters of Wangling Park (王陵公园). There are many more in the murky pools around the bottom of Yuelu Mountain: they are not always to be seen but at night they can be heard. The Chinese name correctly suggests they reside in swamps and marshlands.

Wine for Medicine

Giambattista Giraldi Cinzio (1504-1573), from Egle, Act I Scene IV:

Sileno:
              A Dio, compagni cari.
Ma io vi prego intanto a raccordarvi
Che ‘l vino è medicina a ogni gran cura
E che impossibil è che chi ben beve
Con ogni grave duol non faccia tregua.
 
Silenus:
                Adieu, my dear friends.
But in the meantime, I beg you to commit yourselves
to the fact that wine is medicine for every great worry
and that it is impossible for those who drink well
not to make peace with every serious sorrow they suffer.

Notes:
Giambattista Giraldi Cinzio, Egle; Lettera sovra il comporre le Satire atte alla scena; Favola Pastorale, ed. by Carla Molinari (Bologna: Commissione per i testi di lingua, 1985), pp. 27-28. My translation.
 
‘Give strong drink to them that are sad: and wine to them that are grieved in mind’ Proverbs 31:6.

Gerard van Honthorst  (1592–1656), Triumph of Silenus, wikicommons (Louvre)

Yellow Bittern

Yellow Bittern (Ixobrychus sinensis, 黃葦鳽). This shy diminutive bird was hiding in the lilypads at Taozi lake (桃子湖), but was only noticeable when changing fishing spots. In the summer and early autumn there are often bitterns hidden anywhere umbrageous with lilies and reeds; they are a bird for the patient nature-lover, not for the casual observer.

Epigram on a Cat

Domingo Andrés (c. 1525–c. 1599), ‘De fele’

In praedam inuehitur quasi concita fulminis ales,
   Estque omnis fetus sputaque feles edax.

As if by a rushing thunderbolt the bird is attacked, fitting prey,
And the cat gorges thus on all the little birds, even to their very spittle.

Domingo Andrés, Poesías Varias del alcañizano Domingo Andrés, ed. & trans. José María Maestre Maestre (Teruel: Instituto de Estudios Turolenses de la Excma, 1987), p. 208 [Lib. III.CLV]. English Translation by L.M.P.

Juvenile Long-tailed Shrike

In early spring, a pair of long-tailed shrikes (lanius schach, 棕背伯劳) made a home in the marshy reeds at Xianjia Lake (咸嘉湖). Their nest was near a favoured fishing spot for egrets and night-herons, which the mother shrike tirelessly attacked and displaced from dawn until late. The fishing birds accepted this harassment gracefully, but often just as one left another one arrived so that the constant assaulting must have been tiring work for the mother shrike, on top of tending a nest and later feeding newborns. By June several of her fledglings were flying on their own and only recently have these shrikes left to seek out their next adventures.

A Friend to Yourself

Distichs of Cato, 1.11.1:

Dilige sic alios, ut sis tibi carus amicus
Love other people, yet be your own best friend

Menander, Monostichoi,  407:

Οὐκ ἔστιν οὐδείς, ὅστις οὐχ αὑτῷ φίλος
No one is a friend to others, who is not a friend to himself

My translations.

Female Blue Pansy

Female Blue Pansy (Junonia orithya, 翠蓝眼蛱蝶).

While the male has very noticeable metallic blue and velvet black hindwing, the upperside markings and ocelli are much more vibrant on the brown female butterfly. This species was declared the official butterfly of Jammy and Kashmir last June, and given its distinctive appearance I am only surprised that no government adopted it before then. This is the first one I have seen this year: it was taking advantage of the cooler afternoon to enjoy the garden flowers planted along the Xiang river (湘江).

Age of Adjectives

Logan Pearsall Smith, All Trivia (London: Constable & Company, 1933), p. 76:

But why wasn’t I born, alas, in an age of Adjectives; why can one no longer write of silver-shedding Tears and moon-tailed Peacocks, of eloquent Death, of the negro and star-enamelled Night?