NPPF: CANTO ONE (1) on behalf of Charles

[Jasper Fidget]

Waxwing - "Cedar Waxwings are sleek, elegant birds with long wings, rather
short tails, and a crest. They have a short, broad bill and short legs. Both
sexes look alike. Adults are buffy brown on the head and back. The brown
color shades to pale yellow on the belly and to gray brown on the back,
fading further to slate gray on the rump and upper tail. The tail is tipped
with a yellow band. The undertail coverts are white. The legs and feet are
black. Adults have a narrow, black mask outlined in white that extends over
the face to end behind each eye in a point. The chin is black. At the end of
each secondary feather, the shaft is extended as a small, red, wax-like
appendage. The number of these waxy appendages increases with age, until
adult plumage is attained." 

http://birds.cornell.edu/BOW/CEDWAX/
 

Larches - (from the OED) "Well known coniferous tree native of the Alps,
which is largely cultivated in this country (UK). It's timber is tough and
durable. It yields Venetian Turpentine, bark is used in tanning."

There are local american varieties.....

 

Torquated - (OED)

1) Wearing a torque

2) Formed as or like a torque, twisted from a narrow strip or band

Torque - A collar, necklace, bracelet or similar ornament consisting of a
twisted narrow band or strip, usually of precious metal, worn especially by
the ancient Gauls and Britons

Torque - Twisting or rotary force

Pheasant - Medium sized game bird, native to China stocked pretty much all
over the globe. The most common game variety is the Ring Necked, so called
for its distinctive collar....Hunters will tell you that pheasants always
run towards the sun......

Grouse - Small game bird, native to N. America......Common variety is
referred to as Ruffed. The ruff is a "collar" of feathers around the neck
which the grouse can expand in order to intimidate either other male
grouses, or really stupid predators. Unlike the pheasant, the grouse is
fiercely territorial. Males are in the habit of standing on tree stumps and
"drumming", issuing a distinctive percussive sound by means unknown to your
correspondent.....

more: http://www.ruffedgrousesociety.org/ruffed_facts.asp

Sherlock Holmes - Duh.........From The Return of Sherlock Holmes - The
Adventure of the Empty House....

Holes is believed to have been killed by Morioraty at Reichenbach Fall. But
bowing to popular demand, Doyle brought Sherlock back from the
dead......below is the passage where Watson first meets the phantom...

" A tall, thin man with coloured glasses, whom I strongly suspected of being
a plain-clothes detective, was pointing out some theory of his own, while
the others crowded round to listen to what he said. I got as near him as I
could, but his observations seemed to me to be absurd, so I withdrew again
in some disgust. As I did so I struck against an elderly deformed man, who
had been behind me, and I knocked down several books which he was carrying.
I remember that as I picked them up I observed the title of one of them,
"The Origin of Tree Worship," and it struck me that the fellow must be some
poor bibliophile who, either as a trade or as a hobby, was a collector of
obscure volumes. "

Later....

" 

"I stood up and examined the rocky wall behind me. In your picturesque
account of the matter, which I read with great interest some months later,
you assert that the wall was sheer. This was not literally true. A few small
footholds presented themselves, and there was some indication of a ledge.
The cliff is so high that to climb it all was an obvious impossibility, and
it was equally impossible to make my way along the wet path without leaving
some tracks. I might, it is true, have reversed my boots, as I have done on
similar occasions, but the sight of three sets of tracks in one direction
would certainly have suggested a deception."

http://www.mastertexts.com/Doyle_Arthur_Conan/The_Return_of_Sherlock_Holmes/
Chapter00001.htm

Shagbark (Hickory) - N. American hardwood bearing
"drupes"..........Shagbark, so named for its distinctively shaggy
appearance, is the fuel of choice for southern barbeque fanatics......

Stillicide - (OED) A falling of water in drops, a succession of drops.
Dropping of water from the eaves of a house..

Vermiculated - (from Webster's Unabridged)  Wormlike in shape. Covered with
wormlike elevations:marked with irregular fine lines  of color or with
irregular wavy impressed lines like worm tracks....

Theolatry - (OED) worship of deity or deities

Iridule - curiously this word makes neither the OED, nor Websters.........."
a rainbow reflected in a cloud from a thunderstorm in a distant valley "

Dr. Sutton's light - see Canto Four lines 985-6

"but it's not bedtime yet. The sun attains

Old Dr. Sutton's last two windowpanes.."

 

Lemniscate - (OED) [lemniscotus - adorned with ribbons] The designation of
certain closed curves having a general resemblance to the figure 8.