From peacocks to penguins, a winged menagerie of surprise.
By Maria Popova
“How can the fowl that was born for pleasure sit in a cage and sing?” wrote William Blake, who lived by means of the golden age of the cage as leisure. Zoos have been new and thrilling, and folks simply ignored their cruelty to indulge their curiosity about creatures from distant lands. Besides, zoos contained solely a tiny fraction of the dazzling variety of the animal kingdom – within the days earlier than pictures, earlier than simple journey around the globe, the typical individual encountered the great strangeness of animals. not within the cage however on the web page.
Within the 1820s, a French encyclopedia of pure historical past titled The Bird Gallery got down to current to European eyes the best birds in North America, lots of which are actually endangered, some extinct. The quiet dignity of those good emissaries of our planet’s evolutionary historical past radiates from the consummate illustrations – feathered heirs to the dinosaurs, winged with a kaleidoscope of pleasure.
