Roelandt Savery (1576 - buried 25 February 1639)
Carnations
Jacques le Moyne de Morgues (c. 1533–1588)
Happy birthday to my mother,
and in memory of Aunt Pauline;
sisters, but not twins, both born on St. Valentine’s Day.
“Scarlet he thought the most beautiful of all colours”
François II roi de France. Francois Clouet (1510 - 1572)
Observations made by a young Gentleman, who was born blind, or lost his Sight, so early, that he had no Remembrance of ever having seen, and was couched between 13 and 14 Years of Age. By Mr. William Chesselden, F.R.S. Surgeon to Her Majesty, and to St. Thomas’s Hospital January 1, 1753
Though we say of the gentleman that he was blind, as we do of all people who have ripe cataracts, yet they are never so blind from that cause, but that they can discern day from night; and for the most part in a strong light, distinguish black, white, and scarlet; but they cannot perceive the shape of any thing; for the light by which these perceptions are made, being let in obliquely through the aqueous humour, or the anterior surface of the crystalline, by which the rays cannot be brought into a focus upon the retina, they can discern in no other manner, than a sound eye can through a glass of broken jelly, where a great variety of surfaces so differently refract the light, that the several distinct pencils of rays cannot be collected by the eye into their proper foci; therefore the shape of an object in such a case, cannot be at all discerned, though the colour may. And thus it was with this young gentleman, who, though he knew these colours asunder in a good light, yet when he saw them after he was couched, the faint ideas he had of them before, were not sufficient for him to know them by afterwards; and therefore he did not think them the same, which he had before known by those names. Now scarlet he thought the most beautiful of all colours, and of others the most gay were the most pleasing; whereas the first time he saw black, it gave him great uneasiness, yet after a little time he was reconciled to it ….
When he first saw, he was so far from making any judgment about distances, that he thought all objects whatever touched his eyes, as he expressed it, as what he felt, did his skin; and thought no objects so agreeable as those which were smooth and regular, though he could form no judgment of their shape, or guess what it was in any object that was pleasing to him. He knew not the shape of any thing, nor any one thing from another, however different in shape, or magnitude; but on being told what things were, whose form he before knew from feeling, he would carefully observe, that he might know them again; but having too many objects to learn at once, he forgot many of them; and, as he said, at first he learned to know, and again forgot a thousand things in a day. One particular only, though it may appear trifling, Mr. C. relates: having often forgot which was the cat, and which the dog, he was ashamed to ask; but catching the cat, which he knew by feeling, he was observed to look at her stedfastly, and then setting her down, said, so puss! I shall know you another time. He was very much surprised, that those things which he had liked best, did not appear most agreeable to his eyes, expecting those persons would appear most beautiful that he loved most, and such things to be most agreeable to his sight that were so to his taste. They thought he soon knew what pictures represented, which were showed to him, but they found afterwards they were mistaken: for about 2 months after he was couched, he discovered at once, they represented solid bodies; when to that time he considered them only as party-coloured planes, or surfaces diversified with variety of paint; but even then he was no less surprised, expecting the pictures would feel like the things they represented, and was amazed when he found those parts, which by their light and shadow appeared now round and uneven, felt only flat like the rest; and asked which was the lying sense, feeling, or seeing?
Being shown his father’s picture in a locket at his mother’s watch, and told what it was, he acknowledged a likeness, but was vastly surprised; asking, how it could be, that a large face could be expressed in so little room, saying, it should have seemed as impossible to him, as to put a bushel of any thing into a pint.
At first, he could bear but very little sight, and the things he saw, he thought extremely large; but on seeing things larger, those first seen he conceived less, never being able to imagine any lines beyond the bounds he saw; the room he was in he said, he knew to be but part of the house, yet he could not conceive that the whole house could look larger. Before he was couched, he expected little advantage from seeing, worth undergoing an operation for, except reading and writing; for he said, he thought he could have no more pleasure in walking abroad than he had in the garden which he could do safely and readily. And even blindness he observed, had this advantage, that he could go any where in the dark much better than those who can see; and after he had seen, he did not soon lose this quality, nor desire a light to go about the house in the night. He said, every new object was a new delight, and the pleasure was so great, that he wanted ways to express it; but his gratitude to his operator he could not conceal, never seeing him for some time without tears of joy in his eyes, and other marks of affection: and if he did not happen to come at any time when he was expected, he would be so grieved, that he could not forbear crying at his disappointment. A year after first seeing, being carried upon Epsom Downs, and observing a large prospect, he was exceedingly delighted with it, and called it a new kind of seeing. And now being lately couched of his other eye, he says, that objects at first appeared large to this eye, but not so large as they did at first to the other; and looking on the same object with both eyes, he thought it looked about twice as large as with the first couched eye only, but not double, that they could any ways discover.
When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe – John Muir
“In My Orchard”
Charles Francis Annesley Voysey (1857–1941), English architect, and furniture & textile designer
Charles Robert Darwin FRS (12 February 1809 – 19 April 1882)
Portrait by George Richmond of Charles Darwin in 1840, four years after HMS Beagle returned to England
Nature News Blog
17 January, 2012|Posted by Brian Owens on behalf of Katherine Rowland
A chance discovery has yielded a “treasure trove” of fossils, including specimens collected by Charles Darwin.
The collection, marked “unregistered fossil plants”, has been gathering dust in a gloomy corner of the British Geological Survey for more than 150 years.
When Howard Falcon-Lang of Royal Holloway University of London happened upon the collection by accident last April, he experienced a moment of disbelief.
Of the 314 re-discovered specimens, 17 have been verified as Darwin’s, samples collected during his voyages on the HMS Beagle from 1831 to 1836.
Two of the slide specimens bearing Darwin’s are fossils of 40-million-year-old trees, which he shipped back to the British Museum where they were cut and segmented using newly developed techniques.
The collection also contains some of the first-ever thin sections – a slide technique of grinding rock and sheath to a microthin sliver to reveal the anatomy of its inner structure.
Falcon-Lang describes the specimens as “exquisitely beautiful,” and the historical record shows that many were in fact made as works of art. Following the invention of the thin-section and the polarizing microscope in 1829, a cadre of professional slide-makers set up new businesses to satisfy the growing demand from gentleman collectors.
The specimens originally belonged to Joseph Hooker, a renowned botanist and a close friend of Darwin who was briefly employed at the Geographical Survey to help produce a comprehensive geological map of Britain and its colonies.
In addition to the specimens given to him by Darwin, Hooker’s collection also includes pieces from the private cabinet of Reverend John Stevens Henslow, who had been Darwin’s mentor at Cambridge and whose daughter Hooker would later marry.
The majority of the pieces are believed to be donations from explorers, missionaries and administrators from across the British Empire.
The Geological Survey implemented a formal registry process for acquisitions in 1848. However, by that time Hooker had left for an expedition in the Himalayas and the collection, according to Falcon-Lang, “passed out of memory.”
http://blogs.nature.com/news/2012/01/darwins-long-forgetten-fossils-unearthed.html
Steal Into the Pleached Bower
Julius Schnorr von Carolsfeld (1794 – 1872)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/neurophilosophy/2012/jan/19/1
Chickens, thrushes, pigeons and parrots have all been shown to be sensitive to various illusions, and–lacking the peacock’s tail–males of many species display themselves to females at a particular angle and distance with deliberate intention, because–for instance–the females may prefer males with larger coloured patches on their bodies.
Male Great bowerbirds spend many months building true marvels of complex architecture which consist of a thatched twig tunnel forming an avenue approximately half a metre long, opening out onto a court whose floor is covered with bones, shells and stones.
When a potential mate steps into the avenue, the male stands in the court just by the avenue’s exit, displaying to her the colourful flotsam and jetsam he has collected, one piece after the other.
They are magicians – the bowers they build are like a house of illusions, with visual tricks that manipulate females’ perceptions.
The objects covering the floor of the court are arranged so that they increase in size as the distance from the bower increases. Thus, when the female is standing in the avenue all of the objects in the court appear to be the same size from her point of view, so she may perceive the court as being smaller than it actually is, and the male to be bigger.
Scientists reversed the objects by placing the larger objects closest to the bower and the smaller ones further away, and found that the birds corrected the disarray very quickly.
In all cases the pattern was almost identical to the original within two weeks.
The birds go to great lengths examining their work and rearranging objects to make the pattern as even as possible.
“Males spend most of their time on the bower going into the avenue and looking out, then moving objects, going back into the avenue, and so on. They sometimes fix the twigs in the walls, too.”
During his courtship display, the male waves his treasures towards the female, causing their apparent size to increase.
The more time a female spends in a bower, the more likely she is to mate with its builder so holding her attention longer is important.
http://what-when-how.com/birds/satin-bowerbird-birds/
After carefully constructing a twig avenue on the forest floor; the Satin bowerbird chooses decorations, arranging them around the sunny northern entrance.
He favors blue, but may use yellowish-green ornaments, like the female’s plumage.
If anything outside his color scheme (such as a white flower) falls onto the bower, he’ll quickly remove it.
The male bowerbird is one of the few birds known to use tools. He forms soft bark or other plant fiber into a sponge to absorb a mixture of saliva and bushfire charcoal, holding the sponge in his bill to daub the bower’s inner walls. He also paints the twigs by rubbing them with the juice of pulped blueberries.
The Vogelkop gardener bowerbird of New Guinea builds an astonishing courting place — a hut up to 5′ wide with a moss front garden on which he arranges flowers and fruits. MacGregor’s bowerbird builds a 2′-high twig maypole ringed by a circular dance floor because the brightly colored male dances around his bower to entice a female to enter.
Rival males steal trinkets from an unguarded bower and may even demolish it if the owner doesn’t return in time.
The bowerbird is an accomplished mimic whose repertoire has been known to include the mew of a cat.
All male bowerbirds decorate their bowers lavishly with flower petals and sparkly manmade trash: plastic bottle caps, straws, paper, jewelry, teaspoons …
Chief threats to the bowerbird’s future are forest clearance and shooting by fruit growers, which has led to extermination in some areas.
‘Oekonomische Naturgeschichte der Fische Deutschlands’ M.E. Bloch
Johan Friedrich August Krueger c. 1785
Apples, Roses, Fire, Snow, Medlars, Chestnuts, Tangerine
Jacques le Moyne de Morgues (c. 1533–1588)
Snow
The room was suddenly rich and the great bay-window was
Spawning snow and pink roses against it
Soundlessly collateral and incompatible:
World is suddener than we fancy it.
World is crazier and more of it than we think,
Incorrigibly plural. I peel and portion
A tangerine and spit the pips and feel
The drunkenness of things being various.
And the fire flames with a bubbling sound for world
Is more spiteful and gay than one supposes -
On the tongue on the eyes on the ears in the palms of one’s hands -
There is more than glass between the snow and the huge roses.
Louis MacNeice (September 1907 – September 1963)
For my mother
