these aerial oars of magical colors...

"...we are no longer astonished at the activity shown by some butterflies, such as the sphinx, when they rifle the flowers of our gardens. they flit from one to the other with the speed of an arrow, and like the hummingbirds, they hang motionless before the corolla, plunging their long tongues to the bottom in order to sip the nectar, whilst their wings are agitated by movements which the eye cannot follow!

the delicacy of these aerial oars is no less remarkable than their movements.

however gently we take hold of the wing of a butterfly, our fingers never leave it without having some particles adhering, which seem only fine dust, the source of the magnificent coloring of the insect. but when this dust is submitted to microscopic examination, the observer is surprised to see that each of these grains represents a little flattened plate, lengthened out and of a delicate and complicated structure, which reflects the most magical colors. one of its extremities is generally toothed more or less deeply, whilst the other displays only a little pedicle, by which each imperceptible scale is attached to the transparent membrane of the wing."

image and text from the universe; or, the wonders of creation. the infinitely great and the infinitely little, by f.a. pouchet, 1883. the image is captioned: scales from the wings of different butterflies, seen with the microscope.

when sunspots look like painting...

a beautiful little engraving of sunspots from pouchet's "the universe", 1883. here, the sunspots not only resemble the graphic forms of henri michaux, but pouchet's explanation of them, reeks wonderfully of poetry.

"when they were first pointed out, some theologians maintained that the pure and radiant star (the sun) was perfectly immaculate, and that its pretended blemishes only existed on the glasses of the telescopes of astronomers... but though the existance of these is an incontestable fact, yet their real nature is as yet very imperfectly explained. some maintain that they are only holes in the luminous envelope of the sun, which allow us to see its dark strata. others think they are clouds of vapor, which wander over the surface of this immense globe of fire..."

when birds grew on trees...

in the early days of airforms i did a post related to a belief in the middle ages that lambs grew on trees. i'd never seen anything else related to such things until a gift arrived in the mail from the wonderfuls at woolgathersome, in the form of pouchet's "the universe - or the wonders of creation - illustrated". published in 1883, pouchet's history of natural sciences explores both "the infinitely great and the infinitely little". the illustrations are quite wonderful, and lo and behold in the back of the book in a section entitled monsters and superstitions, i discovered the above image of "the bird-tree", based on a sketch by sebastian munster.

pouchet elaborates: "several water birds were long considered to be the produce of certain trees which grow in the marshes or borders of the sea. our credulous forefathers were persuaded that there was one of these growing in scotland or the orkneys, the fruits of which, as large as eggs and having the same shape, opened at maturity and allowed each little duck to escape.

the vulgar would have not dared to doubt such a fact, for it was quoted by the most renowned scholars. sebastian munster attests the truth of it in his great work on "cosmography". "we find", he says, "trees in scotland which produce a fruit enveloped in leaves, when it drops into the water at a suitable time it takes life and is turned into a live bird, which they call a tree-bird." in order to produce a still fuller proof, the writer himself gives a drawing of it!

pouchet goes on to condemn aldrovandus, a renaissance ornithologist, for propagating "such ridiculous fables"; and believes that aldrovandus was actually talking about barnacles. unfortunately, he doesn't explain when barnacles fly or how one mixes them up with birds... but i'd like to give aldrovandus and sebastian munster a break, since the idea of birds growing on trees is kind of beautiful.