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| Crimora papillata |
 ONE HUNDRED FAMOUS VIEWS OF EDO (TOKYO) NUMBER THIRTY-SIX |
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| VIEW FROM MASSAKI OF SUIJIN SHRINE, UCHIGAWA INLET, AND SEKIYA |
| Late on this day in early spring, we sit on the second floor of one of the teahouses in front of Massaki Inari Shrine, savoring the dish known as dengaku--small squares of skewered tofu brushed with a sweet miso sauce and grilled over charcoal--for which these restaurants were famous.
This particular view may well be from Kinoeneya, the most famous of the dengaku establishments: it is at any rate an elegant setting, with a fresh arrangement of white camellias discreetly shown in section to the left, and the shoji screen of the round window is slid open rightward to reveal a perfectly framed view over the river. |
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| UNION REFUGEES FROM WESTERN MISSOURI COMING INTO ST. LOUIS |
| This illustration shows how cruelly the rebellion is pressing upon the loyal people of Missouri. The Herald correspondent writes from St. Louis:
For some days past the unfortunate sufferers of the southwest portion of the State, who have been driven out on account of their Union sentiments, have lined our thoroughfares, and presented many of the most painful scenes of poverty and affliction ever witnessed in this city. Only a small portion arrived in proportion to the thousands who left Springfield and vicinity in company with General Siegel's division. Their appearance--half naked, benumbed with cold, and hardly able to stand--has excited the liveliest sympathy, and it is evident that something must be done for these destitute people, or they will die outright of starvation. The Tribune correspondent says: Truly enough, for at this hour thousands of refugees are fleeing from Missouri that they may find bread, and afterward a home in our happy Free State. Scantily clad, half famished, and pinched with cold, they enter our border towns and beg, for they have no money, that they may live. Nor are these the ignorant poor--it is the better class in the Slave States who are faithful to the Union. Whole families and whole neighborhoods have come, and the roads leading to St. Louis and the city itself are filled with them. Far to the rear come the various divisions of Price's army, and when they overtake the helpless exiles they rob them of every thing. From the men they take even their pocket-knives. |
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| The cheetah is the world's fastest land mammal. With acceleration that would leave most automobiles in the dust, a cheetah can go from 0 to 60 miles (96 kilometers) an hour in only three seconds. These big cats are quite nimble at high speed and can make quick and sudden turns in pursuit of prey. |
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| Female cheetahs typically have a litter of three cubs and live with them for one and a half to two years. Young cubs spend their first year learning from their mother and practicing hunting techniques with playful games. Male cheetahs live alone or in small groups, often with their littermates. |
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| Most wild cheetahs are found in eastern and southwestern Africa. Perhaps only 12,000 of these big cats remain, and those are under pressure as the wide-open grasslands they favor are disappearing at the hands of human settlers. |
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| AFTERNOON ON LAKE GEORGE |
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| The main characteristics of marsupials which differentiate them from other mammals is that they give birth to immature young which then develop further in a pouch. The word "marsupial" comes from the Latin word marsupium, meaning "pouch." Most, but not all, marsupials have a pouch in which to raise their young. |
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| The breeding season for koalas runs roughly from September to March. This is a time of increased activity, and sound levels increase as males bellow more frequently. This is also when the young from the previous year are weaning from their mothers. |
| Females generally start breeding at about three or four years of age and usually produce only one offspring each year. However, not all females in a wild population will breed each year. Some produce offspring only every two or three years, depending on factors such as the age of the female and the quality of its habitat. In the average female's life span of about twelve years, this means that one female may produce only 5 or 6 offspring over her lifetime. |
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| Once a female has conceived, it is only 34-36 days before the birth of the new baby, called a "joey." The tiny baby which is roughly 2 centimetres long (2.54 inches) and weighs less than 1 gram (.03 ounce), looks rather like a pink jellybean as it is totally hairless, blind and has no ears. |
| The joey makes its way from the birth canal to the pouch completely unaided, relying on its already well-developed senses of smell and touch, strong forelimbs and claws and an amazing sense of direction. Once inside the safety of the pouch, it attaches itself to one of the two teats, which swells to fill its mouth. This prevents the joey from being dislodged from its source of food. The mother contracts her strong sphincter muscle at the pouch opening to prevent the baby from falling out. |
| The young koala drinks only mother's milk for the first six to seven months and remains in the pouch for that time, slowly growing and developing eyes, ears, fur etc. At about 22 weeks, its eyes open and it begins to peep out of the pouch. From about 22 to 30 weeks, it begins to feed upon a substance called "pap" which the mother produces in addition to milk. Pap is a specialized form of faeces, or droppings, which forms an important part of the young koala's diet, allowing it to make the transition from milk to eucalyptus leaves, rather like a human baby is fed "mushy" food when it starts to eat solids. Pap is soft and runny and thought to come from the caecum(a blind ended pouch at the junction of the small and large intestines). It allows the mother to pass on micro-organisms present in her own digestive system which are essential to the digestion of eucalyptus leaves. It is also a rich source of protein. |  |
 Albino | The joey leans out of the pouch opening on the center of the mother's abdomen to feed on the pap, stretching it open towards the source of the pap. The baby feeds regularly on the pap and as it grows it emerges totally from the pouch and lies on its mother's belly to feed. Eventually it begins to feed upon fresh leaves as it rides on her back. The young koala continues to take milk from its mother until it is about a year old, but as it can no longer fit in the pouch, the mother's teat elongates to protrude from the pouch opening. |
| Young koalas remain with their mothers until the appearance outside the pouch of the next season's joey. It is then time for the previous year's joey to wean and find its own home range. If a female does not reproduce each year, the joey stays with her longer and has a greater chance of survival when it does leave its mother. |
| Females generally live longer than males as the males are more often injured during fights; they tend to travel longer distances with the resulting increase in risks such as cars and dogs; and they more often occupy poorer habitat.
Putting a life span on the average koala can be misleading because some survive only for a period of weeks or months, while others survive to old age. Koalas living in an undisturbed habitat would have a greater life expectancy than those living in suburbia. Some estimates for the average life-span of an adult wild male koala are ten years, but the average survival rate for a dispersing sub-adult male living near a highway or a housing estate is closer to two or three years. |  |
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| Spottail pinfish are exclusive to the western Atlantic ocean. They can be found from Chesapeake bay to southern Florida. Spottail pinfish are also known from the northern Gulf of Mexico, but are not known from the West Indies. There are only questionable reports from Cuba.
Spottail pinfish are common to shallow waters near coasts, such as bays and harbors, though only rarely in brackish areas. They prefer flat, vegetated bottoms such as beds of sea grass, where the feed on a mixture of plants and small invertebrates. |
 SACAGAWEA Michael Haynes http://www.mhaynesart.com | PART ONE Jean Baptiste Charbonneau (February 11, 1805 - May 16, 1866) was an American explorer who is best known for traveling across North America as an infant with his mother Sacagawea as part of the Lewis and Clark Expedition. He was the son of Native American Sacagawea and her French-Canadian husband, trapper and interpreter Toussaint Charbonneau. Expedition co-leader William Clark nicknamed the boy Pomp or Pompy. Charbonneau's image can be found on the Sacagawea dollar coin. He is the only child ever depicted on United States currency. Pompeys Pillar on the Yellowstone River in Montana and the community of Charbonneau, Oregon are named for him. |
| Charbonneau was born at Fort Mandan in North Dakota, the encampment at which the Lewis and Clark Expedition wintered in 1804-1805.
His father, French-Canadian trapper Toussaint Charbonneau, had been hired by the expedition as an interpreter. Captains Lewis and Clark agreed to bring along his then-pregnant Native American wife Sacagawea when they learned she was of the Shoshone people, as they knew they would need to negotiate with the Shoshone for horses and guides at the headwaters of the Missouri River. Meriwether Lewis noted the boy's birth in his journal: "The party that were ordered last evening set out early this morning. the weather was fair and could wind N. W. about five oclock this evening one of the wives of Charbono was delivered of a fine boy. It is worthy of remark that this was the first child which this woman had boarn and as is common in such cases her labour was tedious and the pain violent; Mr. Jessome informed me that he had freequently administered a small portion of the rattle of the rattle-snake, which he assured me had never failed to produce the desired effect, that of hastening the birth of the child; having the rattle of a snake by me I gave it to him and he administered two rings of it to the woman broken in small pieces with the fingers and added to a small quantity of water. Whether this medicine was truly the cause or not I shall not undertake to determine, but I was informed that she had not taken it more than ten minutes before she brought forth perhaps this remedy may be worthy of future experiments, but I must confess that I want faith as to it's [sic] efficacy." |
| Photographer, conservationist; born in San Francisco. A commercial photographer for 30 years, he made visionary photos of western landscapes that were inspired by a boyhood trip to Yosemite. He won three Guggenheim grants to photograph the national parks (1944--58). Founding the f/64 group with Edward Weston in 1932, he developed zone exposure to get maximum tonal range from black-and-white film. He served on the Sierra Club Board (1934--71). |  |
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| DUNE, WHITE SANDS NATIONAL MONUMENT, NEW MEXICO |
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| THE HERD BOY Frederic Remington |
| DISCLAIMER: Material used in Bitts and Bytes is gathered from various sources--mainly the World Wide Web.
Authorship cannot always be credited nor the source defined. Authenticity of material is assumed to be correct, but is not guaranteed. |  |