April 28, 2011

THE WEDDING OF THE PRINCE OF WALES March 10, 1863

The following text and illustrations taken from the April 11, 1863 edition of Harper's Weekly.

We devote a very large proportion of our space this week to illustrations of the Marriage of the Prince of Wales, which took place on 10th ult., and was the great event of the day in Europe.  It is so short a time since the Prince was among us here that we are sure our fair readers will be glad to see him again--in "counterfeit presentment"--with his fair young bride. On page 236 we illustrate the Princess Alexandra alighting from the railway car, looking very pretty and girlish; on page 228 we give fine portraits of THE HAPPY COUPLE; on this page a portrait of Queen Victoria with the Princess Beatrice in her arms and on pages 232 and 233 a fine illustration of the marriage in St. George's Chapel at Windsor.

PRINCESS ALEXANDRA ALIGHTING FROM RAILWAY CAR

THE PRINCE (Albert Edward) AND PRINCESS (Alexandra Caroline Maria) OF WALES

QUEEN VICTORIA AND PRINCESS BEATRICE

ST. GEORGE'S CHAPEL AT WINDSOR

ANNAS HUMMINGBIRDS

STUDY OF HUMMINGBIRDS Throughout his professional life Gould had a strong interest in hummingbirds.  He accumulated a collection of 320 species, which he exhibited at the Great Exhibition of 1851. Despite his interest Gould had never seen a live hummingbird.  In May 1857 he travelled to the United States with his second son Charles.  He arrived in New York too early in the season to see hummingbirds in that city, but on 21 May 1857 in Bartram's Gardens in Philadelphia he finally saw his first live bird, a Ruby-throated Hummingbird. He then continued to Washington D.C. where he saw large numbers in the gardens of the Capitol.  Gould attempted to return to England with live specimens, but not being aware of the conditions necessary to keep them they only lived for two months at most.

STORM IN THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS MOUNT ROSALIE

IMPERIAL Arriving in New Orleans, July 1863.

One week after the July 9th surrender of Port Hudson, the merchant steamboat IMPERIAL tied up at the wharf at New Orleans, completing the 1,200-mile passage from St. Louis undisturbed by hostile guns. After two years of land and naval warfare, the grip of the South had been broken ~ the Mississippi River was open, and merchant and military traffic now enjoyed unrestricted passage to its mouth. In the words of Lincoln, "The Father of Waters again goes unvexed to the sea."

DIXIE BAYOU

The killing, cutting up, cooking, and final devouring of the ox constituted scenes of no little interest to the soldier.  In an army like that of the Potomac several hundred head of cattle perish weekly.  The march of the army up the Peninsula, and the various movements in Maryland and Northern Virginia have left their mark behind them in huge piles of whitening beef-bones.  The Southern soldiers are not so well provided as ours in this respect.  Beef with them is a luxury; in the Army of the Potomac it has been so abundant as to be wasted. From Harper's Weekly, January 1863

The cattleya group is known for large, showy and sometimes fragrant flowers. Some of the most stunning orchids in cultivation are cattleyas, with huge flowers that can measure eight inches across and come in a wide variety of colors and patterns.

In the wild, there are several dozen species of cattleya, but it's unlikely you'll find any of these at local garden centers. Because of their ease of growth and sheer beauty, cattleyas are the most hybridized of all orchids, and there are thousands upon thousands of registered hybrids.

The cattleya orchids like bright light. They can even be acclimated to some direct sunlight, although keep from direct summer sunlight. They will not flower without plenty of light. In the right light conditions, the leaves will be apple green. Darker leaves might indicate too little light, while yellow or brown leaves might indicate too much direct sunlight.

Cattleya are sympodial orchids that grow from an underground rhizome. They typically send up new pseudobulbs in the spring. During the growing season, water heavily, but do not allow them to sit in water. Cut water back when the flowers begin to emerge from their sheaths--water in these sheaths will rot the immature flowers. A well-watered cattleya will have fat lead pseudobulbs.

During the growing season, fertilize with a weak orchid fertilizer weekly (weakly weekly, as the growers say). During the rest period, fertilizer every other week.

Cattleya grow by means of a branching, creeping rhizome with thick, clinging roots. Repotting is stressful, and a plant will usually take a season to recover, so only repot when necessary. They will do well in most orchid mixes, including pink bark, clay pellets, perlite, charcoal, or any well-draining medium.

Most cattleya produce one new flush of growth annually, and each new pseudobulb should produce flowers that same growing season, often in late summer or winter. Some of the hybrids might produce two blooms annually. When a plant goes into flower, reduce watering to avoid accidentally rotting the flowers. Emerging cattleya flowers are protected by a thin sheath that emerges from the center of the leaf.

When repotting a cattleya, make sure there is enough room for the rhizome to produce at least two new pseudobulbs before it hits the edge of the pot. Typically, repotting is done in spring, at the beginning of the growing season. Cattleya can also be slab-mounted on tree fern or logs.

FIRE IN THE LAND OF SHADOWS

APPLES, PEACHES, PEARS AND GRAPES

Edo--once also spelled Yedo or Yeddo--is the former name of the Japanese capital Tokyo, and was the seat of power for the Tokugawa shogunate which ruled Japan from 1603 to 1868.
The One Hundred Famous Views of Edo, the last masterwork of the ukiyo-e artist Utagawa Hiroshige (also known as Ando), is a series of landscape ukiyo-e prints whose subject matter is views of the city of Edo and its outskirts. It is composed of 118 prints designed by Hiroshige I, one print by Hiroshige II and a Table of Content, totaling 120 prints as a complete set. The series, along with his Fifty-three Stations of the Tokaido, is not only the most renowned polychrome woodblock prints of famous placesby Hiroshige, but also, with its bold compositional contrast between foreground and background and assimilation of the Western linear perspective, represents an apex of the landscape ukiyo-e prints of the Edo period.	Its superb artistic quality was also recognized in Europe in the latter part of the 19th century, and the marked influence it exerted on Impressionist and Post-Impressionist painters such as Monet, Van Gogh and Gauguin is well-known. Furthermore, since the Tokyo Association for the Crafts of Traditional Woodblock Printmaking completed its project of reprinting the One Hundred Famous Views of Edo in 2003, the number of exhibitions and publications related to the series has risen. At the same time, new scholarly works on its development of pictorial compositions and its place in a wider historical background have been undertaken in recent years, showing its continuing vitality as an object of research.

ONE HUNDRED FAMOUS VIEWS OF EDO (TOKYO) NUMBER FORTY-SIX

YOROI FERRY, KOAMI-CHO

The Yoroi Ferry, which we see in the distance loaded with a standing crowd, carried passengers across the Nihonbashi River at the point where it widened abruptly after flowing under Edobashi Bridge. We stand here on the Kayaba-cho side looking westward at the harmonious regularity of the warehouses of Koami-cho, where commodities such as rice, soy and oil, brought in from all parts of Japan to supply the shogun's capital, were stored.  In the endless stretch that Hiroshige suggests here by exaggerated perspective, we sense the prosperity of the city. Swallows flit through a summer sky streaked with bright yellow, while a stylish young woman, the bold patterns of her dress a mark of late Edo taste, passes along the near ferry landing. In the middle of the river, an oarsman deftly sculls his small chokibune, leaving a deep blue wake that suggests swift movement.  Beyond him to the right a cargo boat is laden with boxes marked "tea." The curious pictorial intrusion to the left is the looming prow of a ship, seemingly headed straight for the young woman.  This is one of the large cargo ships that hauled much of the local river and coastal trade supplying Edo.

BADGER STATE

Saurornitholestes Saurornitholestes ("lizard-bird thief") is a genus of coyote-sized carnivorous dromaeosaurid dinosaur from the Upper Cretaceous (Upper Campanian stage) of Alberta, Canada. Several partial skeletons, dozens of isolated bones, and scores of teeth are known from the badlands of Dinosaur Provincial Park in Alberta; most of these are housed at the Royal Tyrrell Museum of Palaeontology, in Drumheller, Alberta. Like other theropods in the family Dromaeosauridae, Saurornitholestes had a long, curving, blade-like claw on the second toe. Saurornitholestes was more long-legged and lightly built than other dromaeosaurids such as Velociraptor and Dromaeosaurus. It resembles Velociraptor in having large, fanglike teeth in the front of the jaws. Saurornitholestes most closely resembles Velociraptor, although the precise relationships of the Dromaeosauridae are still relatively poorly understood. Saurornitholestes appears to have been the most common small theropod in Dinosaur Provincial Park, and teeth and bones are much more common than those of its more massive contemporary, Dromaeosaurus. Little is known about what it ate and how it lived, but a tooth of Saurornitholestes has been found embedded in the wing bone of a large pterosaur, probably a juvenile Quetzalcoatlus.  Because the pterosaur was so much larger than Saurornitholestes, Currie and Jacobsen suggest that the theropod was probably scavenging the remains of an already dead animal.

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