On Wed, 31 Jan 2007 20:40:42 -0000, rupertmallin <[log in to unmask]>
wrote:
"Are obituaries the only means people speak here?"
Date: Mon, 3 Apr 2006 12:21:01 +0100
Reply-To: mallin1 <[log in to unmask]>
Sender: British & Irish poets <[log in to unmask]>
From: mallin1 <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Moles, Galls and Starlings
Content-Type: multipart/alternative;
Hi
Collaboration
Here are three short texts to connect with creatively - either one, two or
all. Reply with this heading only. Please keep submissions short. Of
course, as other texts emerge, feel free to connect to them. Yes, it is
experimental anarchy, so my fingers are crossed! The incentive is that the
resulting interconnecting/cross-cutting texts will appear on a dedicated
blogsite when the exercise concludes on April 30th (when I'll reveal the
sources of these short extracts).
Best wishes, Rupert Mallin
_______________________________________________
1. Note: by the "moll-hilles" are probably meant the religious houses.
Whoever has investigated the fortress, or habitation of the mole, the
various galleries and excavations of which it consists, and which the
secret-working and undermining animal is continually extending in search of
food, or whoever, as we all have, has seen a fruitful field destroyed by a
number of their encampments, will see the fitness of the application of
this term to the numberless conventional establishments from which the
friars used to issue forth in search of plunder, to the scandal and
disgrace of the church.
2. One of the most noteworthy findings in the present study is the high
rate of parasitism of the gall-inducer A. quercuscalicis, especially as
this is the first time I have recorded the phenomenon in Northumberland -
despite having previously observed 536 galls from six different locations
in the county between 1999 and 2004. It is difficult to make comparisons
with recent rates of A. (q) elsewhere in Britain, since in the literature
it is not always made clear whether parasitoids emerging from knopper galls
have attacked A. (q) in the inner gall or the inquiline in the outer wall.
Much of the recent increase in parasitism of knopper galls in Britain is
attributable to a great increase in the attack rates by inquilines,
particularly S. gallaepomiformis, whose larvae are in turn attacked by
several species of chalcid parasitoids.
3. In Stuffed Birds for the embellishment of the walls of a room, there is
still a small second-hand street sale, but none now in images or chimney-
piece ornaments... The stuffed birds which sell best are starlings. They
are sold as second-hand, but are often 'made up' for street-traffic; an old
bird or two, I was told, in a new case, or a new bird in an old case. Last
Saturday evening one man told me he had sold two 'long cases' of starlings
and small birds for 2s. 6d. each. There are no stuffed parrots or foreign
birds in this sale, and no pheasants or other game, except sometimes
wretched old things which are sold because they happen to be in a case.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
|