Struggle for Existence

Speaking seriously, we know that a really good book will more likely than not receive fair treatment from two or three reviewers; yes, but also more likely than not it will be swamped in the flood of literature that pours forth week after week, and won't have attention fixed long enough upon it to establish its repute. The struggle for existence among books is nowadays as severe as among men. If a writer has friends connected with the press, it is the plain duty of those friends to do their utmost to help him. What matter if they exaggerate, or even lie?

Quotation: The novelist Jaspar Milvain in George Gissing's New Grub Street: a novel, London, 1891

It's sedimentary

After all the horrible wet weather today was sunny, calm and even warm. The gulls were back in fine fig, after their stay on the Oval (the local large playing fields), where last week there had been thousands of them puddling about in large areas of standing water.

The tide was out, a long way for this beach. And on the still-wet parts of the sand, could be seen some amazing runnels.

Reminiscent of the tracks made by stones shifting about on salt-flats, there had a weird out-of-this-world appearance.

A closer inspection reveals what is going on. The sea is still draining away, lowering the water table. As it does so it leaves behind the stones, in a miniature braided channel. Like a ladder in a pair of tights, the channel runs backwards up the beach.

Closer still and it becomes obvious that this is an erosion feature. It is very similar to satellite images from deserts showing wadis.

Sometimes the effect can be more or less symmetrical, providing 'antlers' to this black 'nosed' deer!

This one shows the eroded sand being deposited again as mini-deltas just beneath, and to the left of the rock. Just about the whole of erosion and deposition cycle could be seen in miniature.

Holiday Over

Sea, sun and air did their healing work, as did also the long idle days in the home garden; Laura drank in health and vigour, with every breath.

She had need of it all when, the golden holidays over, she returned to school; for the half-year that broke, was, in many ways, the most trying she had yet to face. True her dupes first virulence had waned - they no longer lashed her openly with their tongues - but the quiet, covert insults. That were now the rule, were every bit as hard to bear; and before a week had passed, Laura was telling herself that, had she been a Christian Martyr, she would have preferred to be torn asunder with one jerk, rather than submit to the thumbkin. Not an eye but looked askance at her; on every face was painted a reminder of her moral inferiority; and even new comers among the boarders learnt, without always knowing what her crime had been, that Laura Rambotham was "not the thing".

The Getting of Wisdom by Henry Handel Richardson, 1910.

Mad May Days

This weekend the weather has been wet, wet, wet, and windy. It has not daunted a lot of brave souls from taking a walk on the beach. Most of them had dogs, so maybe it was the dogs taking the owners for a walk.

Unusually a large tree trunk has been washed up it's almost totally covered with spume. The spume was really quite a remarkable feature. Large amounts of foamy bubbles spread all over the beach. Wherever there was a little bit of material standing above the surface of the sand, the spume gathered round it. This log had a distinct leeward and windward side.

Where there wasn't anything for the spume to stack up against, it just blew all over the place. In this photo, if you look carefully, you can see some airborne!

And here you can see tracks that balls of foam have made as they're blown across the sand.

The next day the wind had dropped, only a bit! But sufficiently for some of the gulls to return to the shoreline to see what pickings they could get from the foamy strand. They didn't look too impressed.

Yellow Rock Lichen

Here's a retaining wall of cemented boulders just by the Esplanade. The renovations to this part of St Clair are not very old, perhaps 5 or 6 years.

It puts into question the old tale about lichens taking a long time to grow. Some indeed do. Apparently Rhizocarpon geographicum a lichen found all over the world, which favours growing on rocks in alpine and polar regions, grows at between 3mm and 25mm per year.

This species (which according to a now out-of-print book) is Xanthoria parietina is clearly not that slow growing! There are several varieties, some of which grow on smooth-barked trees. But the preferred habitat is coastal rocks beyond the reach of the tide and spray.

Colour varies according to how much sunshine the colony is exposed to. And photographs in a more recent book, show a grey variant with only a hint of yellow. This book also reports, wouldn't you just know it, that the New Zealand lichen flora is very rich. I should say, I stayed away from the very impressive two volume 'proper' lichen book - David Galloway's Flora of New Zealand : lichens : including lichen-forming and lichenicolous fungi published in 2007 - far too complicated for me!

The out-of-print book was Lichens of New Zealand by William Martin and John Child. 1972. AH & AW Reed; and the recent book was New Zealand lichens by Bill and Nancy Malcolm. 2000. MicroOptics Press. (a home-made publication if ever there was - but useful nontheless). Incidentally the University catalogue tells me Martin was born in 1886, and as there is not death date, and as the book was a first edition I assume that he would have been still growing slowly in 1972. He can't surely be alive now though!

Waiting Gulls

Just in case you thought I'd forgotten about the gulls ...

here they are ...

waiting in a Hitchcock fashion

for goodness only knows what. Well, I guess the gulls know but they ain't saying.

Cultivating Science

It is therefore desirable, when we contrast ourselves with the rude and superstitious savages who preceeded us, to remember, as cultivators of science, that the high comparative place which we have reached in the scale of being has been gained step by step by a conscientious study of natural phenomena, and by fearlessly teaching the doctrines to which they point.

It is by faithfully weighing evidence, without regard to preconceived notions, by earnestly and patiently searching for what is true, not what we wish to be true, that we have attained that dignity, which we may in vain hope to claim through the rank of an ideal parentage.

Quotation from: Principles of Geology 10th edition (1868) by Charles Lyell

Draining Life

I'll bet this drain hasn't been cleared out in a wee while!

On closer inspection I could identify at least two species of ferns, including that old favourite European Hart's Tongue Scolopendrium phyllitis. A leaflet from the pest species that's locally called Mexican Daisy - an unwanted, but very pretty weed - can be seen in the centre of the drain. And a tiny bit of Herb Robert leaf can be seen top left.

Autumn Flowering Crocus

Colchicum the autumn flowering crocus, make a brave show when most other things are well and truly over.

Sadly, they are fairly fragile and a recent heavy rain storm put paid to all of the ones in our garden.

But they are pretty while they last.