3-066-089 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Odd Sketches at the Zoological Gardens: "Birds of a Feather", 1881. 'Among the observant and meditative visitors to any of those instructive garden-exhibitions of foreign beasts and birds, which are established in the principal cities of Europe...some minds will be tempted to detect whimsical likenesses between the different species of animals there placed on view, and the variety of characteristic human figures met with inside or outside the precincts allotted to the zoological collection. A few droll examples of this kind of undesigned and unconscious resemblances, which may be seen either in the face, the gesture and attitude, or the symptoms of temper and moral disposition, so far as irrational creatures may be credited with a moral faculty, have been set forth in the drawings by one of our Artists...[This one represents the] aspect of a learned lecturer on natural history, with a very beaky style of visage, expounding and exemplifying the habits of the parrot tribe...That "one touch of nature" which "makes the whole world kin" seems here to be multiplied into many diverse touches; suggesting a kindred nature, in some respects, between certain brutes or feathered bipeds, and certain individuals of mankind'. From "Illustrated London News", 1881.