The Feejee Mermaid and Other Essays in Natural and Unnatural History PDF Download
Are you looking for read ebook online? Search for your book and save it on your Kindle device, PC, phones or tablets. Download The Feejee Mermaid and Other Essays in Natural and Unnatural History PDF full book. Access full book title The Feejee Mermaid and Other Essays in Natural and Unnatural History by Jan Bondeson. Download full books in PDF and EPUB format.
Author: Jan Bondeson
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 1501722271
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 332
Get Book Here
Book Description
In his new collection of essays, Jan Bondeson tells ten fascinating stories of myths and hoaxes, beliefs and Ripley-like facts, concerning the animal kingdom. Throughout he recounts—and in some instances solves—mysteries of the natural world which have puzzled scientists for centuries. Heavily illustrated with photographs and drawings, the book presents astounding tales from across the rich folklore of animals: a learned pig more admired than Sir Isaac Newton by the English public, an elephant that Lord Byron wanted to employ as his butler, a dancing horse whose skills in mathematics were praised by William Shakespeare, and, of course, the extraordinary creature known as the Feejee Mermaid. This object became the foremost curiosity of London in the 1820s and later in the century toured the United States under the management of P. T. Barnum. Bearing a striking resemblance to a wizened and misshapen monkey with a fishtail, the mermaid was nonetheless proclaimed a genuine specimen by 'experts.' Bondeson explores other zoological wonders: toads living for centuries encased in solid stone, little fishes raining down from the sky, and barnacle geese growing from trees until ready to fly. In two of his most fascinating chapters, he uncovers the origins of the basilisk, considered one of the most inexplicable mythical monsters, and of the Vegetable Lamb of Tartary. With the head and body of a rooster and the tail of a snake, the basilisk was said to be able to kill a person with its gaze. Bondeson demonstrates that belief in this fabulous creature resulted from misinterpretations of rare events in natural history. The vegetable lamb, a mainstay of museums in the seventeenth century, was allegedly half plant, half animal: it had the shape of a little lamb, but grew from a stem. After examining two vegetable lambs still in London today, Bondeson offers a new theory to explain this old fallacy.
Author: Jan Bondeson
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 1501722271
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 332
Get Book Here
Book Description
In his new collection of essays, Jan Bondeson tells ten fascinating stories of myths and hoaxes, beliefs and Ripley-like facts, concerning the animal kingdom. Throughout he recounts—and in some instances solves—mysteries of the natural world which have puzzled scientists for centuries. Heavily illustrated with photographs and drawings, the book presents astounding tales from across the rich folklore of animals: a learned pig more admired than Sir Isaac Newton by the English public, an elephant that Lord Byron wanted to employ as his butler, a dancing horse whose skills in mathematics were praised by William Shakespeare, and, of course, the extraordinary creature known as the Feejee Mermaid. This object became the foremost curiosity of London in the 1820s and later in the century toured the United States under the management of P. T. Barnum. Bearing a striking resemblance to a wizened and misshapen monkey with a fishtail, the mermaid was nonetheless proclaimed a genuine specimen by 'experts.' Bondeson explores other zoological wonders: toads living for centuries encased in solid stone, little fishes raining down from the sky, and barnacle geese growing from trees until ready to fly. In two of his most fascinating chapters, he uncovers the origins of the basilisk, considered one of the most inexplicable mythical monsters, and of the Vegetable Lamb of Tartary. With the head and body of a rooster and the tail of a snake, the basilisk was said to be able to kill a person with its gaze. Bondeson demonstrates that belief in this fabulous creature resulted from misinterpretations of rare events in natural history. The vegetable lamb, a mainstay of museums in the seventeenth century, was allegedly half plant, half animal: it had the shape of a little lamb, but grew from a stem. After examining two vegetable lambs still in London today, Bondeson offers a new theory to explain this old fallacy.
Author: Jan Bondeson
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 9780801436093
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 336
Get Book Here
Book Description
A research physician whose specialties are rheumatology and internal medicine, Bondeson indulges his (and our) fascination with natural anomalies by presenting his findings concerning such historical scientific curiosities as the dragon-like basilisk, Jumbo the king of elephants, the raining down of fish and frogs, the vegetable lamb, and the title creature, the Feejee Mermaid. His approach is assuredly more scientific than anecdotal, but it still reads as a bit of a morbid history of natural science fraud and human gullibility. Quite a few bandw photos and drawings illustrate the text. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR
Author: Colin Murphy
Publisher: The O'Brien Press Ltd
ISBN: 1788490681
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 415
Get Book Here
Book Description
Bestselling author, Colin Murphy, explores the historical figures and events that have existed for centuries in the fringes and brings them out into the open for the reader. Full of historical stories which will intrigue you, captivate you, revolt you and even make you laugh! Colin Murphy welcomes you into the fringes of history where shocking stories and compelling facts await you... Fierce History is a collection of bizarre, grotesque and unexpected episodes from history from all over the world, and from ancient to more modern including: Siblings of famous people - Al Capone's brother who hunted down illegal distillers - Irishman Frank Shackleton, brother of legendary Antarctic explorer Ernest, who was pretty much rubbish at everything, and may have stolen the Irish Crown Jewels - Napoleon's sex-maniac sister Weird historical incidents - Flaming camels of war, - Living turkey parachutes; - Crazy assassination attempts Bizarre medical practices: - Dr Evan O'Neill Kane, who in 1921 performed an appendectomy on himself. - 'Radioactive water' to cure arthritis, gout, neuralgias, poor circulation and a variety of other illnesses – eh, no, it just kills you. Remarkable children: - William Rowan Hamilton by the age of twelve could speak fourteen languages, and went on to discover the quaternion, essential to the development of modern theories of electromagnetism and quantum mechanics, scratching his new mathematical formula on to the side of Broom Bridge in north Dublin
Author: Vaughn Scribner
Publisher: Reaktion Books
ISBN: 1789143136
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 321
Get Book Here
Book Description
A wide-ranging, beautifully illustrated history of mermaids and mermen from the classics to cosplay. People have been fascinated by merpeople and merfolk since ancient times. From the sirens of Homer’s Odyssey to Hans Christian Andersen’s The Little Mermaid and the film Splash, myths, stories, and legends of half-human, half-fish creatures abound. In modern times “mermaiding” has gained popularity among cosplayers throughout the world. In Merpeople: A Human History, Vaughn Scribner traces the long history of mermaids and mermen, taking in a wide variety of sources and using 117 striking images. From film to philosophy, church halls to coffee houses, ancient myth to modern science, Scribner shows that mermaids and tritons are—and always have been—everywhere.
Author: Sean Brawley
Publisher: Lexington Books
ISBN: 0739193368
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 321
Get Book Here
Book Description
The South Seas charts the idea of the South Seas in popular cultural productions of the English-speaking world, from the beginnings of the Western enterprise in the Pacific until the eve of the Pacific War. Building on the notion that the influences on the creation of a text, and the ways in which its audience receives the text, are essential for understanding the historical significance of particular productions, Sean Brawley and Chris Dixon explore the ways in which authors’ and producers’ ideas about the South Seas were “haunted” by others who had written on the subject, and how they in turn influenced future generations of knowledge producers. The South Seas is unique in its examination of an array of cultural texts. Along with the foundational literary texts that established and perpetuated the South Seas tradition in written form, the authorsexplore diverse cultural forms such as art, music, theater, film, fairs, platform speakers, surfing culture, and tourism.
![Mysterious Creatures [2 volumes] PDF](https://books.google.com/books/content/images/frontcover/mETPEAAAQBAJ?fife=w80-h100)
Author: George M. Eberhart
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 1576077640
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 772
Get Book Here
Book Description
A comprehensive guide to cryptozoology—the quest to identify animals that have not been officially catalogued by science and to place these unknown animals into their proper zoological categories. In this fascinating two-volume encyclopedia, author George M. Eberhart provides a comprehensive catalog of nearly 1,000 cryptids—unknown animals usually reported through eyewitness accounts and not yet described by science. Cryptids are the stuff of folklore, hoaxes, and genuine scientific breakthroughs. There are 400 now-classified cryptids once considered either extinct or pure fantasy. The cryptozoologist's job is to strip away the myth, misidentification, and mystery—and separate fact from fiction. Mysterious Creatures covers everything from dinosaurs and the emala-ntouka, an elephant-killing dinosaur-like animal of central Africa, to searches for the Loch Ness monster, Bigfoot, and other cryptozoological hoaxes. Entries about specific animals include the derivation or meaning of each cryptid's name, its scientific name, variant names, a physical description, behavior, description of tracks, habitat, significant sightings, present status, and possible explanations. Illustrations and photographs accompany many entries. The book also includes resources and references for further information.
Author: Nosson Slifkin
Publisher: Zoo Torah
ISBN: 1933143185
Category : Animals in rabbinical literature
Languages : en
Pages : 383
Get Book Here
Book Description
Dragons, unicorns, mermaids ... all the famous creatures of myth and legend are to be found in the Torah, Talmud and Midrash. But what are we to make of them? Do they really exist? Did the Torah scholars of old believe in their existence? And if not, why did they describe these creatures? Sacred Monsters is a thoroughly revised and vastly expanded edition of the bestselling book Mysterious Creatures. Rabbi Natan Slifkin, the famous "Zoo Rabbi," revisits all the creatures of that work as well as a host of new ones, including werewolves, giants, dwarfs, two-headed mutants, and the enigmatic shamir-worm. Sacred Monsters explores these cases in detail and discusses a range of different approaches for understanding them. Aside from the fascinating insights into these cryptic creatures, Sacred Monsters also presents a framework within which to approach any conflict between classical Jewish texts and the modern scientific worldview. Complete with extraordinary photographs and fascinating ancient illustrations, Sacred Monsters is a scholarly yet stimulating work that will be a treasured addition to your bookshelf
Author: Muriel J Morris
Publisher: FriesenPress
ISBN: 1039159516
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 324
Get Book Here
Book Description
When Muriel Morris delved into her family genealogy, she never expected it to change her life. As it turns out, Morris’s great-great grandparents, Walter Bentley Woodbury, and his Javanese/Eurasian wife, Marie, had been erased from her family history. Not only did Morris discover that she was 1/ 32nd Indonesian but investigating her truncated family tree led her to wonder if racism was the reason Walter Woodbury’s genius as an inventor never truly came to fruition. You probably don’t know who Walter Bentley Woodbury is, but you should. He’s the reason this book is in your hands. Woodbury invented and patented the first photographic printing press so that thousands of copies could be made from a single negative—enough for a book or an illustrated magazine. But he’s unknown. In fact, he died in so much debt that a collection had to be taken for his funeral and he left his wife and eight children £246. His obscurity is due to two factors. One is Woodbury himself—his mercurial mind caromed on to the next project, whether it was an aerial observation camera for the military or a train signal that used sound for foggy weather or paper-backed film, before he had secured the business side of his existing inventions. The second was that he and his family were ostracized because Marie Woodbury, his Eurasian wife, was visibly biracial and so were most of their children. The scientific community accepted Woodbury as an inventor, but the wider community never accepted his wife and family, virtually all of whom left England after Woodbury’s tragic death. This book tells a story that needs telling in our modern world. Not White Enough is largely dedicated to Woodbury’s career and travels, but the author also sheds some light (sometimes speculative) on his wife, their eight children, and other little-known Woodbury family members in an effort to piece together the puzzle of her family’s fascinating and often tragic past.
Author: Michael Dylan Foster
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520271017
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 330
Get Book Here
Book Description
Monsters, ghosts, fantastic beings, and supernatural phenomena of all sorts haunt the folklore and popular culture of Japan. Broadly labeled yokai, these creatures come in infinite shapes and sizes, from tengu mountain goblins and kappa water spirits to shape-shifting foxes and long-tongued ceiling-lickers. Currently popular in anime, manga, film, and computer games, many yokai originated in local legends, folktales, and regional ghost stories. Drawing on years of research in Japan, Michael Dylan Foster unpacks the history and cultural context of yokai, tracing their roots, interpreting their meanings, and introducing people who have hunted them through the ages. In this delightful and accessible narrative, readers will explore the roles played by these mysterious beings within Japanese culture and will also learn of their abundance and variety through detailed entries, some with original illustrations, on more than fifty individual creatures. The Book of Yokai provides a lively excursion into Japanese folklore and its ever-expanding influence on global popular culture. It also invites readers to examine how people create, transmit, and collect folklore, and how they make sense of the mysteries in the world around them. By exploring yokai as a concept, we can better understand broader processes of tradition, innovation, storytelling, and individual and communal creativity. Ê
Author: Robert Cribb
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
ISBN: 0824840267
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 338
Get Book Here
Book Description
Wild Man from Borneo offers the first comprehensive history of the human-orangutan encounter. Arguably the most humanlike of all the great apes, particularly in intelligence and behavior, the orangutan has been cherished, used, and abused ever since it was first brought to the attention of Europeans in the seventeenth century. The red ape has engaged the interest of scientists, philosophers, artists, and the public at large in a bewildering array of guises that have by no means been exclusively zoological or ecological. One reason for such a long-term engagement with a being found only on the islands of Borneo and Sumatra is that, like its fellow great apes, the orangutan stands on that most uncomfortable dividing line between human and animal, existing, for us, on what has been called “the dangerous edge of the garden of nature.” Beginning with the scientific discovery of the red ape more than three hundred years ago, this work goes on to examine the ways in which its human attributes have been both recognized and denied in science, philosophy, travel literature, popular science, literature, theatre, museums, and film. The authors offer a provocative analysis of the origin of the name “orangutan,” trace how the ape has been recruited to arguments on topics as diverse as slavery and rape, and outline the history of attempts to save the animal from extinction. Today, while human populations increase exponentially, that of the orangutan is in dangerous decline. The remaining “wild men of Borneo” are under increasing threat from mining interests, logging, human population expansion, and the widespread destruction of forests. The authors hope that this history will, by adding to our knowledge of this fascinating being, assist in some small way in their preservation.
