Punch,  61 (1871), 165.

Scraps for Sub-Editors (To be Sprinkled in the Newspapers during the Dull Season)

Anon

Genre:

Reportage, Spoof

Subjects:

Meteorology, Statistics, Geology, Palaeontology, Zoology, Monstrosities, Darwinism, Descent, Development, Evolution, Animal Behaviour, Gender


    A series of reports of bizarre physical phenomena, including a 'shower of monkeys in Monmouth', the discovery, by a Massachusetts woman, of a live pterodactyl in a piece of coke she was splitting for the stove, and the report of the shrimp eating a large craw-fish in the Crystal Palace aquarium. The report on the pterodactyl explains that although the animal was subjected to the high temperature by which coal is converted into coke, it had sufficient vitality to survive. Adds that the woman discoverer of the reptile is 'an eminent geologist' and a 'believer in the Darwinian theory of descent'. Taking the pterodactyl to be one of her 'primeval ancestors', she gives it pin money.



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

Printed from Science in the Nineteenth-Century Periodical: An Electronic Index, v. 4.0, The Digital Humanities Institute <http://www.sciper.org> [accessed ]