Cinema · Observations · Nature
As a dacha-dweller, I would add that many regard the lily as a poisonous plant. At any rate, certain varieties can be highly toxic, for cats, for example. There are reports that a cat which has drunk water containing lily sap, or licked lily pollen from its fur, may
NB! · Archive · Books · Science · Nature
No one ever saw a genuine barometz, and the search for it went on until the end of the eighteenth century. Drawing from a book by the German Friedrich Justin Bertuch
The East · Books · Nature · Ethnography
From the Middle Ages onwards, European literature mentions a mythical plant-animal known as the Baranets, sometimes called the Boranets or Boramets. It is also known as the Tartar lamb or the Scythian lamb. The first mentions of the Baranets appear in the notes of medieval travellers; in time the
NB! · Archive · Books · Nature
The Scythian or Tartarian Lamb (Borametz). Drawing from Claude Duret's "Admirable History of Plants" (Histoire admirable des plantes), 1605
NB! · Art · Museums · Nature · Humour
The cheetah's escape was captured by George Stubbs. True, the landscape does not look much like Berkshire, but the predator really did go about in a red cap and girdle. In 1970 the painting was bought at Sotheby's by the Manchester gallery
The East · London · Mores · Nature
In 1764 cheetahs were brought to England from India; they miraculously survived the long voyage and became part of the collection of foreign curiosities of George Pigot, the former Governor of Madras, who had returned to the island. On the way to London the predators stopped as guests of the
NB! · Art · Nature · Rome · Humour
An incredibly detailed female leopard in giallo tigrato marble (the stone that adorns Santa Maria Maggiore). The cat has glass eyes 😍 And her two cubs live in the Pinacoteca Ambrosiana
NB! · Art · Museums · Observations · Nature · Humour
I wonder what plant it is that Cranach's Adam in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna has on his nether parts? It looks like an epiphyte, something like an orchid. It would be amusing: in that case it is Eve who has plucked the flower, and not the other
Monarchies · Mores · Paris · Nature
The forecasters' promise that there will be no summer recalled the run of rainy years in the fourteenth century that heralded, for the Russian lands, the onset of the Little Ice Age. Which would give way to a brief interglacial in the 1440s. The coldest phase of the Little
NB! · Monarchies · Mores · Nature · Humour
In 1577 Sir Humphrey Gilbert presented Elizabeth I with a narwhal tusk adorned with gold, but claimed it was the horn of a sea unicorn. Though we know perfectly well that these are quite different animals, the rascal!
NB! · Monarchies · Moscow · Heritage · Nature
NB! · Archive · Moscow · Nature
There is a legend that the hurricane of 1904 carried a horse and cart across to the other bank of the Moskva River. At any rate, it lifted houses into the air, wooden and brick alike