I found that he had dipped a little in chimerical studies and had a hankering after astrology and alchymy.

The Vampire squid – which is actually an octopodiform and not a squid, and looks like an apparition from an impossibly ancient dream – is harmless to humans.

A new chapter in the study of Chinese sculpture in the Sung Dynasty opened with the discovery of the Mai-chi-shan caves already referred to and the publication of a little-known sculptured cliff at Ta-tsu in Szechwan, dating chiefly from the Sung. The lively realism of the Ta-tsu high relief figures, some of which resemble the clay figures at Mai-chi-shan, others reminiscent of mediaeval European sculpture, is further proof that beside the courtly and scholarly arts for which the Sung is famous there flourished a vigorous school of popular Buddhist art of a very different character.]

Farmer highlights the fact that the reasons why causing offence is (or is not) deemed criminalizable are often historically specific, and follows Duff in counselling against attempts to ground criminalization in some 'master principle' […]