Genre:

Essay, Drollery

Subjects:

Botany, Steam-power, Gender, Education

    Punch shows how 'young gentleman' can bluff their way in dealing with ladies' questions on botany and the steam engine. For example, having been asked 'what is the name of that lovely flower', the young man is advised to reply: 'Constantine Palaeologus. A decasyllabic plant; native of Polynesia. Class Alexandria; order, Viriginia'. Included in Punch's suggested explanation of a steam-engine is the sentence, 'That part of the machine which you can see moving up and down is the hypothesis, the tube which it moves in is termed the dilemma'.