Genre:

Illustration, Drollery; Miscellaneous

Relevant illustrations:

wdct.

Illustrators:

C H B *

Subjects:

Scientific Practitioners, Botany, Natural History, Electricity, Physics, Engineering, Steam-power, Astronomy, Philosophy, Chemistry, Pneumatics, Statistics, Anatomy, Zoology, Mathematics, Evolution, Darwinism, Telegraphy, Animal Development

    Comprises a calendar surrounded by cartoons portraying the social, political, scientific, and cultural events of 1866. Around the border of the illustration are short sentences connected with the signs of the zodiac. Each date in the calendar is signified by an event or a person, including Carl Linnaeus, Benjamin Franklin, James Watt, Luigi Galvani, Nicholas Copernicus, David Hume, Joseph Priestley, John Graunt, Georges Cuvier, Roger Bacon, Auguste Comte, Gottfried W Leibniz, and Izaak Walton. The illustration includes a cartoon of Thomas H Huxley, with a watering-can for his head and clutching a book marked 'Huxley on Origin of Species'. Charles R Darwin appears as St Peter talking to two large fishes: he holds a staff in one hand and a water pot in the other. Snaking around the middle of the illustration is the Atlantic telegraph cable, on the end of which hangs a label 'Pity the Poor Submarine'. The telegraphic theme is also picked up in one of the zodiacal messages. In the top right-hand corner of the illustration a line of monkeys paint the portrait of a swell, possibly suggesting that he is the end result of evolutionary development.