|
|
Cornugaya Directory 04
Page 04
The twelfth, the Purification, is absurdly bad, but I do not know
whether the expression of strong personal dislike to the Virgin
which the High Priest wears is intended as prophetic, or whether it
is the result of incompetence, or whether it is merely a smile gone
wrong in the baking. It is amusing to find Marocco, who has not
been strict about archaeological accuracy hitherto, complain here
that there is an anachronism, inasmuch as some young ecclesiastics
are dressed as they would be at present, and one of them actually
carries a wax candle. This is not as it should be; in works like
those at Oropa, where implicit reliance is justly placed on the
earnest endeavours that have been so successfully made to thoroughly
and carefully and patiently ensure the accuracy of the minutest
details, it is a pity that even a single error should have escaped
detection; this, however, has most unfortunately happened here, and
Marocco feels it his duty to put us on our guard. He explains that
the mistake arose from the sculptor's having taken both his general
arrangement and his details from some picture of the fourteenth or
fifteenth century, when the value of the strictest historical
accuracy was not yet so fully understood.
Nearly three hundred species of _Coleoptera_, or beetles, occupy
similar positions. Almost any rotten log or stump when broken open
discloses a half dozen or more "horn" or "bess beetles," _Passalus
cornutus_ L., great, shining, clumsy, black fellows with a curved horn
on the head. They are often utilized as horses by country children,
the horn furnishing an inviting projection to which may be fastened,
by a thread or cord, chips and pieces of bark to be dragged about by
the strong and never lagging beast of burden. When tired of "playing
horse" they can make of the insect an instrument of music; for, when
held by the body, it emits a creaking, hissing noise, produced by
rubbing the abdomen up and down against the inside of the hard, horny
wing covers. This beetle passes its entire life in cavities in the
rotten wood on which it feeds, and when it wishes a larger or more
commodious home it has only to eat the more.
|
