naamahdarling:elodieunderglass:discardingimages:all saintsHours of Louis de Laval, France ca. 1480Bn
naamahdarling:elodieunderglass:discardingimages:all saintsHours of Louis de Laval, France ca. 1480BnF, Latin 920, fols. 180r, 181r, 182r(weary science lecturer voice) Now these next slides are a close-up, showing the same scales at a 20x magnification. Now you can clearly see the tiny saints, or “fish mites”, that live in the scales of the fish. Yes, they do look quite shady, don’t they… haha, yes, it’s very funny, Susan. It’s because their host fish is dead and under a microscope, Susan. Now, the interesting thing from our perspective is that you can accurately place the geographical origin of the fish by examining its population of saints. Genotyping is obviously the most accurate way of doing so, but a gross observation will usually give you a clue. The first fish has a fairly diverse population of saints - it came from a port city - Barcelona, actually. The second, however, came from a tributary of the Amazon. (carefully scheduled weary pause while one or two students titter) No, that is a lie. Actually, that was a joke that came with the lecture, which is thirty-five years old. The mites are white and did not come from South America. This fish came from a fishpond in a sixteenth-century nunnery in Lincolnshire. The next slide is of an ice cream bar at 50x magnification.. a “Nobbly Bobbly,” actually. You can see the adult ice-cream-mite hiding in the sprinkles…Bless you. -- source link
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