Tea at Trianon: Four-Legged Whale?

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Sunday, February 16, 2025

Four-Legged Whale?

They don't look anything like whales to me. From All That's Interesting:

According to Gizmodo, the discovery of this new Peregocetus pacificus species has shed new light on the evolution of these seafaring mammals. Fossil evidence has established that modern dolphins and whales derived from small, four-limbed, hoofed animals that lived in South Asia during the Eocene around 50 million years ago. The scientific community had previously established that these animals made it to North America 41.2 million years ago. What makes this latest discovery so significant is that this quadrupedal whale is 42.6 million years old — thus forcing evolutionary biologists to reassess established timeframes. Additionally, this discovery, published in the journal Current Biology, makes it clear that ancient whales originally called South America — not North America — their first home in the Western Hemisphere. (Read more.)