Punch,  55 (1868), 272.

A Little Christmas Dream

D M *

Genre:

Illustration, Drollery

Relevant illustrations:

wdct.

Illustrators:

D M *

Subjects:

Palaeontology, Ancient Authorities, Religion, Natural History, Zoology, Comparative Philology, Human Development, Reading


    Shows a snow-bound street on which a gigantic woolly mammoth (whose trunk ends with the head of sharp-fanged beast) chases a small boy. The caption explains the artist's attempt to follow Louis Figuier's view, presented in his work on the 'world before the flood' (Figuier 1865), that it is better to awaken the imagination of children by the 'study of the natural history of the world' rather than by 'fables and fairy tales'. Accordingly, the illustration shows the author's 'imaginative' six-year old son being introduced to some of the 'fauna of the preadamite world, as they appear restored in Mr. Figuier's book'.



© Science in the Nineteenth-Century Periodical Project, Universities of Leeds and Sheffield, 2005 - 2020

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