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In some horrible irony, if I spend hours crafting an elaborate thesis and supporting it with fascinating points then nobody reads it. If instead I just slap down a cheetah cub in a bucket or a cute grinning snake everyone loves it. The amount of attention a post receives is inversely proportional to the amount of effort it takes. Argh!
I reveal this hard truth in order to introduce Ferrebeekeeper’s ninth and tenth most popular posts of all time!
The tenth most popular post was about the visually appealing but otherwise unremarkable green vine snake (Ahaetulla nasuta) of the Indian subcontinent. This inoffensive reptile spends its life pretending to be a vine! Apparently people love it though, because all sorts of visitors came to look at the two beautiful photos of the snake which I found on the internet.
Green vine snake (Ahaetulla nasuta) Photo by National Geographic
Ninth most popular was a post about adorable baby cheetahs playing in and around hats. Of course the post was really about more than how cute cheetahs are (and they are very cute indeed) but how they survive in a habitat which has moved away from their blazing fast skill set. I love cheetahs, so this was a special post to me too.
I said Cheetah with a hat not cheetah in a hat…oh, just go look at the post
So far, of the top ten posts on Ferrebeekeeper, the tenth most popular was about serpents– which is the best that serpents have managed to do thus far. The ninth most popular is about mammals, but (spoiler) there are more mammals as we get farther up the list. People really love those furry rascals (and ARE those furry rascals)!
The silver-gilt coronet of the 14th Earl of Kintore (you could have bought it at Christie’s for less than a used Trans Am)
A coronet is a small crown which is worn by a nobleman or noblewoman. In the European tradition coronets differ from kingly crowns in that they lack arches—they are instead simple rings with ornaments attached. Different ranks of nobility wear different coronets. For example, in England the various ranks are denoted as follows:
Prince/Princess: The Coronet of a Child of the Sovereign (decorated with crosses and fleurs de lis)
Duke: has eight strawberry leaves of which five are seen in two-dimensional representations
Marquess: that of a marquess has four strawberry leaves and four silver balls (known as “pearls”, but not actually pearls)
Earl/Countess: eight strawberry leaves and eight “pearls” raised on stalks
Viscount: sixteen “pearls” touching one another
Baron: six “pearls”
If you bothered counting the “pearls” and strawberry leaves on the above illustrations, you will recognize that certain adornments have been left out (which is to simplify the heraldic representation of coronets). I wish I knew what the strawberry leaves represent! If I was a sinister & bloodthirsty nobleman, that is not the sort of decoration I would choose for my fancy fancy hat, but maybe I am not thinking like a peer. Other western European nations have differently shaped coronets with different ornaments, but the same sort of rank-by-decoration pertains.
Coronets are largely symbolic—many nobles do not even have them made. By tradition they are worn only at the coronation of a monarch. Coronets are important however in heraldry, and the peerage rank of a noble house can easily be determined by looking at the little crown drawn on their shield.
The Coat of Arms of Baron Audley (featuring a swan and a pearl coronet)
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