Ptecticus aurifer (金黄指突水虻).
Flies are not the most loved insect, but they can be some of the most fascinating. This soldier fly from Yuelu Mountain is a wasplike mimic and is very colorful: individuals come in a wide array of yellows, oranges, reds and blacks.
Dinner was announced and the two friends joined the surge of guests going towards the buffet in the garden. It was a feast of prawns, by far the most expensive delicacy in Pakistan at the moment. Tandoori prawn. Prawn skewer kebabs. Grilled prawns. Prawn pulao. Penne prawns. Deep-fried prawns. Prawn jalfrezi. Prawn korma. Sweet-and-sour prawns. Butterfly prawns. Prawn fried rice. Prawn-stuffed paratha. Prawn cutlets. Prawn salad.Soniah Kamal, Unmarriageable: Pride and Prejudice in Pakistan (London: Allison & Busby, 2019), p. 166.
‘Okay, Nadir Sheh, we get it!’ Alys said as she and Sherry joined the buffet line. ‘You can afford all the prawns in the ocean. And I’d thought the flowers ostentatious.’
‘I love prawns,’ Sherry said, taking heaping spoonfuls of each entrée. ‘I’ve only ever eaten them once, and even then we only got four each. This is why you marry rich: an endless array of prawns whenever you want and prepared however you want.’
Et hoc oro, ut caritas vestra magis ac magis abundet in scientia et in omni sensu [Phil 1,9]. Caritas abundat, idest crescit in scientiam, ut probare et discernere sciat homo non solum mala et bona, sed etiam inter bona et potiora.St. Anthony of Padua, Sermones Dominicales et in Solemnitatibus , ed. by Antonius Maria Locatelli et al ., 3 vols (Padua : Sodalitas Universalis Sancti Antonii Patavini Edit ., 1895 ), II, p. 553. From his Sermon on the Twenty-Second Sunday After Pencecost (III.17). My translation.
“And this I pray, that your charity may more and more abound in knowledge, and in all understanding” (Philippians 1,9). Charity abounds, that is it grows into knowledge, so that a man may know how to examine and discern not only between good and evil, but also between good and better.
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| Marcantonio Bassetti - St Antony Reading |
Weeping Widow (Lacrymaria lacrymabunda, 毡毛小脆柄菇).
There are many mushrooms appearing on Yuelu Mountain due to the humity and rain. These weeping willow mushrooms were not on the mountain itself but in a patch of grass nearby. They have hairy caps. The gills are yellow-brown when they are fresh but soon turn black and are often laden with dew (they drip or 'weep'). The spore print is black but one has to be quick to get it as the picked mushrooms quickly turn to oozing black mush.
Instrue praeceptis animum, ne discere cessa;Dicta Catonis 3.1.
nam sine doctrina vita est quasi mortis imago
Build up your mind with lessons, never cease learning;
for life without education is an echo of death.
Otium sine litteris mors est et hominis vivi sepulturaSeneca, Ep. Mor. 82.3.
Free time without literature is death and burial for a living man
ἐρωτηθεὶς τίνι διαφέρουσιν οἱ πεπαιδευμένοι τῶν ἀπαιδεύτων, "ὅσῳ," εἶπεν, "οἱ ζῶντες τῶν τεθνεώτων."Diogenes Laertius 5.19.
When asked how the educated differ from the uneducated, [Aristotle] answered "as much as the living from the dead."
Oxyopes sertatus (斜纹猫蛛).
A a small (usually slightly under or over a centimetre in length) and very common lynx spider in Changsha: in warm or mild weather they are often laying in wait on reeds or leaves. They have long black setae on all their legs and a strange geometry: their abdomens form a stretched isosceles triangle, have two small eyes on their front and six larger eyes arranged hexagonally on the top of their heads.
When you have eliminated all which is impossible, then whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.Arthur Conan Doyle, The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes
“But I understand nothing—but nothing of all this! The enemy that this Ratchett spoke of, he was then on the train after all? But where is he now? How can he have vanished into thin air? My head, it whirls. Say something, then, my friend, I implore you. Show me how the impossible can be possible!”Agatha Christie, Murder on the Orient Express (Glasgow: Fontana, 1984; 1934), p. 116.
“It is a good phrase that,” said Poirot. “The impossible cannot have happened, therefore the impossible must be possible in spite of appearances.”
Spotted Dove (Spilopelia chinensis, 珠颈斑鸠).
A common scene: a single child growing up in the city.
Juvenile Greater Necklaced Laughingthrush (Pterorhinus pectoralis, 黑领噪鹛).
I rarely see the young ones; this one has been keeping close to its mother and its flock but is slowly growing more bold in its explorations among the trees and bushes of Yuelu Mountain.
The Jesuit missionary Gabriel de Magalhães (1609-1677) gives one of the few early modern European accounts of the Dragon Boat Festival in his 1668 (but not published until 1688) account of the history of China. Magalhães refers to the festival as Lúm chuên, an obvious corruption of 龙船, but also mentions that the residents of Macao refer to the festival as Lumba Lumba: which I venture is derived from the Malay word for a ‘race’.
Relevant passages from the 1688 French and English editions:
Gabriel Magalhaens, New History of China, Containing a Description of the Most Considerable Particulare of that Vast Empire (London: Printed for Thomas Newborough, 1688), p. 107:
But in regard this Story is very like to that which occasion’d the Festival solemniz’d the fifth day of the fifth Moon, which the Inhabitants of Macao, if I am not deceiv’d, call Lumba Lumba, and the Chineses Lûm Chuen, that is to say Barks made in the form of a Dragon, wherein they sport themselves that day upon the Rivers [...].Gabriel de Magaillans, Nouvelle relation de la Chine, contenant la description des particularitez les plus considerables de ce grand empire (Paris: Claude Barbin, 1688), p. 131:
Mais comme cette Histoire ressemble fort à celle qui a esté cause de la Fête qu’on celebre le cinquiéme jour de la cinquiéme Lune, que ceux de Macao, sa je ne me trompe appellent Lumba Lumba, & les Chinois, Lúm chuên, c’est-à-dire, barques faites en forme de Dragon, dans lesquelles ils courent ce jour-là sur les rivieres [...]
Little Ringed Plover (Thinornis dubius, 金眶鸻). Juvenile.
Not a rare bird, but not one that is normally found in Changsha! Very briefly it was visible on the shore of the Xiang River between two thick banks of reeds, and then it was off, back on route to wherever it is journeying this summer.
The rest of the pretty sitting-room—looking into the orchard, and all covered over with dancing tree-shadows—was filled with books. They lay on the ground, they covered the walls, they strewed the table. He was evidently half ashamed and half proud of his extravagance in this respect. They were of all kinds—poetry and wild weird tales prevailing. He evidently chose his books in accordance with his own tastes, not because such and such were classical or established favourites.Mrs. Gaskell, Cranford (London: W. Foulsham, n.d.; 1851-1853) p. 35.
Greater Necklaced Laughingthrush (Pterorhinus pectoralis, 黑领噪鹛).
A beautiful south Asian forest bird, occasionally one sees (one more-often hears) them throughout the forests on Yuelu Mountain. On this occasion there was a small and friendly flock of six adults and one fledging, scouring the foliage together.
GIACOMO More particularsWilliam Shakespeare, Cymbeline II.4.78-79.
Must justify my knowledge.