Observations · People · Nature

Tulips are non-toxic and edible, unlike most other bulb flowers

I did not know this fact from the life of Audrey Hepburn, but I shall remark in passing that, unlike nearly all bulbous flowers, tulips are not merely non-poisonous but perfectly edible. Tulip bulbs are sometimes baked, and they resemble baked potatoes. The stems, leaves and blooms of tulips

A man in a blue sleeveless top carries a huge curved mammoth tusk on his shoulders in front of a wooden house and snow; the listing price is 3,600,000 roubles.

NB! · Observations · Palaeontology · Nature · Humour

Mammoth tusk about three metres long offered for sale at 3,600,000 roubles

Russia is not only bears, vodka and the balalaika. It is also a three-metre mammoth tusk priced like a studio flat, on a classified-ads site. The photograph, incidentally, is splendid.

Aristocracy · Art · Monarchies · Nature

Nelson the Newfoundland of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge in Edwin Landseer's paintings

The dog in these paintings by the British animal painter Edwin Landseer is Nelson, a Newfoundland belonging to Adolphus and Augusta, Duke and Duchess of Cambridge. In the first portrait Nelson appears with a biscuit on his nose, alongside Princess Mary, daughter of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge and

Museums · Society · Nature

Khmelita Museum-Reserve urges people to stop burning dry grass, which kills wildlife

The Khmelita Museum-Reserve is using its Instagram to urge people not to burn dry grass. A grass fire is a terrible wound to nature and a disaster for many living creatures. When grass is set alight by these ill-starred gardeners, leverets, born in April, perish, along with birds&

Geography · Nature · Ethnography

The last Greek shepherds and the end of cross-border transhumance in the 20th century

Greek shepherds are a most interesting and, in our day, extremely small group, preserving age-old traditions of transhumant pastoralism and the way of life that goes with them. Barely a century ago, thousands of shepherds would calmly cross mountain valleys many kilometres wide to reach their ancestral pastures, scattered

Books · Nature · Ethnography

The Warlike Cry of Native Americans and Its Effect on Bison and Bears

John Tanner, in his narrative "Thirty Years Among the Indians", relates a curious detail which may undoubtedly bear witness to the hunting role of cries in remote antiquity:. at the piercing war whoop of the Indians a bison might fall into a swoon, and a bear might flee

Art · Nature

Child with hunting dogs in a joint painting by Jan Fyt and Erasmus Quellinus the Younger

A very serious little boy with hunting dogs and a bird of prey. A collaborative painting by the Antwerp animal painter Jan Fyt (1609-1661) and Erasmus Quellinus the Younger (1607-1678). Such joint works were not uncommon among the Flemish, especially for Fyt. The principle was simple: to achieve

Architecture · Heritage · Society · Paris · Nature

One thousand trees from French forests for the spire and transept of Notre-Dame

The original roof of Notre-Dame, a masterpiece of engineering, was built in the twelfth century from 13,000 oaks, which is why it was called la forêt (the forest), while the spire was rebuilt in the nineteenth century. After Macron announced that traditional techniques and materials had been chosen

Architecture · Heritage · Paris · Nature

Eight oaks from the Bercé forest blessed for the spire of Notre-Dame de Paris

In France, 200-year-old oaks that are to be felled for the reconstruction of the spire of Notre-Dame de Paris have been blessed. For the restoration of the 96-metre spire, enormous oaks have been chosen, fifty metres tall, with trunks more than a metre in diameter, from

Two people with a tripod stand in the snow before the illuminated Parthenon, covered in scaffolding, in a snowy haze.

NB! · Architecture · Observations · Nature

The Parthenon in snow and a reflection on global climate change

The Parthenon in snow is very beautiful. Though I cannot quite make out which myth we have ended up in, if global climate change, to all appearances, is no myth at all

Aerial view of the snow-covered Acropolis with the Parthenon on top of the hill during a snowfall.

NB! · Geography · Nature

Snowfall in Northern Greece almost every year, in Athens every five to seven years

Athens today. And the level of snow in Greece on this same day from 2005 to 2020. Heavy snowfalls occur in Northern Greece almost every year, even on the islands. In Southern Greece, including Athens, they are rarer, but in modern times they are still quite usual: snowfalls here come

Architecture · Heritage · Paris · Nature

Parc de Sceaux in a Paris suburb, laid out by André Le Nôtre in the late 17th century

Winter in the Parc de Sceaux on the outskirts of Paris. The park was laid out in the late 17th century by André Le Nôtre, one of the most celebrated landscape architects in the world and the creator of the parks and gardens of Vaux-le-Vicomte, Versailles, the Tuileries,