The Platypus and the Mermaid, and Other Figments of the Classifying Imagination
By Harriet Ritvo (Trustee; NHC Fellow, 1989–90; 2002–03) “Cats is ‘dogs,’ and rabbits is ‘dogs,’ and so’s parrots; but this ’ere ‘tortis’ is a insect,” a porter explains to an astonished traveler in a nineteenth-century Punch cartoon. Railways were not the only British institution to schematize the world. This enormously entertaining book captures the fervor of the … Continued