Puss in Boots Updated

Puss in Boots ©

(Sorry this story continues in the Wow-Wow Tales published through CreateSpace.com – b)

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Pen Portraits- Marquess of Salisbury

Robert Gascoyne-Cecil(1830-1903) was a descendent of Sir Robert Cecil of the Elizabethan fame. He was three times Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, from 1885 to 1886, 1886 to 1892 and 1895 and 1902 and also served four times as Foreign Secretary. His time as Prime Minister coincided with a great expansion of the British Empire. Lord Salisbury is also remembered as an adherent of the policy of “splendid isolation”, the desire to keep Great Britain out of European affairs and alliances. He was also the last British Prime Minister to serve from the Lords.
He was notoriously myopic and mistook people in his own cabinet and also his son. He once looked at the photograph of Edward VII and mistook him for Sir.Redvers Buller. Intemperate in speech( of Disraeli-‘the grain of dirt that clogged the political machine’) he was not above granting one of his nephews an out of turn favor. In 1887 he made Arthur Balfour from obscurity to front-line post of Chief Secretary for Ireland, a vital post that gave rise to the expression,’Bob’s your uncle.’ Subject to nervous storms, pessimistic, shambling he on a ceremonial occasion induced near apoplexy on his sovereign by appearing in a mixture of two uniforms.
A representative of the landed aristocracy, he held the reactionary credo, “Whatever happens will be for the worse, and therefore it is in our interest that as little should happen as possible.” Instead of seeing his party’s victory in 1886 as a harbinger of a new and more popular Conservatism, he longed to return to the stability of the past, when his party’s main function was to restrain demagogic liberalism and democratic excess.
(ack: wikipedia, eminent Edwardians/Piers Brendon-Penguin-1979)

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Nature’s Ways: Bees and the Flowers

Nature has allowed two way communication whereby the user and the used benefit in a manner beneficial to both. Alas, man seems to think taking is the mark of a man on the go, while giving makes him a wimp. He takes natural resources of the earth as though he may cash them with impunity, but when severe drought stalks the land while the seasonal rains are expected, he knows it is a signal for the end times. There are things he can give to the world to his profit, and take lessons of Nature with all due humility that before laws of Nature he is of equal weight as humble bees and earthworms. 

“The co-evolution between flowers and bees has a long and beneficial history, so perhaps it’s not entirely surprising that we are still discovering today how remarkably sophisticated their communication is,” Professor Daniel Robert, from the University of Bristol team concludes after studying their interaction and the research was published in the month of February,  online edition of the journal Science.

Some of the points are as follows:

Plants are known to emit weak negatively charged electric fields, and bees acquire a positive charge of up to 200 volts as they fly through the air.

How do the bees and the plants communicate? They communicate by electric signals.

As a charged bee approaches a flower, the difference in electrical potential is not enough to produce sparks, but can be felt by the insect.

The researchers investigated the signals by placing electrodes in the stems of petunias.

They found that when a bee landed on a flower, the plant’s electrical potential changed and remained altered for several minutes.

This could be a way of letting a bee know it is landing on a flower that has already been visited and lost its nectar, the scientists speculate. Surprising fact is bumblebees also have this ability .They also can detect it from change in color.

How bees detect the fields is unknown, but the researchers suspect the electrostatic force might make their hair bristle. A similar hair-raising effect is seen when placing one’s head close to an old-style TV screen.(ack: the Guardian,21 Feb,2013)

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Beluga Whale swimming- pen

Beluga whale,swim,whales marine animals, mammals,benny thomas,drawing,black and white,

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Walrus-pen drawing

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Mother and cub-black bears

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A Fox-head-illustration

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Aesop Fables-13.5

 

Sorry, the story continues in Almost Aesop, Fables available through Amazon.com-b

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Aesop Fables-13.4

Sorry, the story continues in Almost Aesop, Fables available through Amazon.com-b

 

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Swans-illustration

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