How to Tell the Birds from the Flowers, and Other Wood-cuts
Wood, Robert Williams, 1868-1955Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019
Rating 3.8- Word count
- 18K words
- Chapters
- 2
Tags
English Originals Science EnlightenmentBird IdentificationLight ReadingIllustrated GuideHumor ReliefPoetic ParodySummary
Project Gutenberg was the first provider of free electronic books, or eBooks. Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, invented eBooks in 1971 and his memory continues to inspire the creation of eBooks and related technologies today.How to tell the Birds from the Flowers, and other Wood-cuts by Robert Williams WoodAuthor: Wood, Robert Williams, 1868-1955,Language: English, Class: PS: Language and Literatures: American and Canadian literature, Release Date: Aug 4, 2010Editor's review
This little book is a playful work by the physicist Robert Williams Wood, pairing woodcut prints with short verses in a parody of the naturalist's guide, turning the identification of birds and flowers into a game of verbal and visual puns. Its value lies not in rigorous natural history but in a scientist's humor and cross-disciplinary imagination: the author was a researcher in acoustics and optics, yet he uses the plainest black-and-white woodcuts and rhyming lines to stage misidentifications and reversals, making for a light but thought-provoking read. For Chinese readers it is more a graphic-literary trifle to dip into, suited to odd moments for savoring the typographic wit and verbal play of late nineteenth- to early twentieth-century Anglo-American popular publishing. There is no need to seek narrative continuity; treat it as a bedside book to leaf through repeatedly, and if you compare it with the English original you can also enjoy the gap and the fun of puns across the two languages.Who it's for
A good fit for
- Readers who enjoy illustrated trifles and light reading to dip into
- Readers interested in natural-history parody and scientific humor
- Language lovers who want to savor English puns through short verses and prints
- Readers who need a bedside book for odd moments
Not a good fit for
- Readers seeking rigorous knowledge of bird or plant identification
- Readers who prefer a complete narrative or long prose
- Readers who need a Chinese translation and are not used to reading the English original
Reading tips
- Look at the woodcut first, then read the verse, and enjoy how image and text undercut each other.
- No need to read straight through; pick a few bird-and-flower pairs each time.
- At puns, consult a dictionary or compare with a translation and note where the wordplay lands.
- Use it as light reading before bed or on the commute, ten to fifteen minutes at a time.
About the publisher
Project Gutenberg United States · Founded in 1971Project Gutenberg is a digital publishing project focused on public-domain ebooks. Its publishing direction centers on classic literary works whose copyright has expired, covering genres such as poetry, drama, fiction, and epic. Representative books include Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Homer's The Iliad, Dante's La Divina Comèdia: Purgatòri, Cervantes's The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Its author resources consist mainly of classic Western writers such as Wordsworth, Proust, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Grahame, and Tolstoy. Its publishing feature is the provision of freely accessible ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats; it is not a traditional publisher, and publicly available information is limited.
Contents
- 1
- 2
FAQ
Is this book a serious natural-history guide?
No. It parodies the format of a naturalist's identification manual, using woodcuts and rhyming verses to create misidentifications and puns between birds and flowers; its point is humor and wordplay, not reliable species identification.Can I read it without a biology background?
Yes. The book is short and consists mainly of pictures and short lines, with no need for specialist knowledge. Just treat it as an illustrated trifle, and use a dictionary for unfamiliar English puns.Why would a physicist write on a natural-history subject?
The sources identify the author, Robert Williams Wood, as a physicist, and this book is precisely a cross-disciplinary spoof by a scientist. Its woodcuts and short verses show it is aimed at general readers and reflect a scientist's humor rather than professional research.What should I keep in mind when reading the electronic edition?
The book comes from Project Gutenberg and is a public-domain English e-book. How well the woodcuts display depends on your reading device; a larger screen or adjusted contrast will help you see the line details.This site is an index: you start “Search all sources” in your browser, and the entries it lists all point to third-party sites; please judge their availability yourself.
About the author
Wood, Robert Williams, 1868-1955 AuthorRobert Williams Wood (1868–1955) is an author about whom limited public information is available. Four of his works are held in the collection, spanning humorous popular science and science fiction. How to tell the Birds from the Flowers, and other Wood-cuts, together with its companion How to Tell the Birds from the Flowers: A Manual of Flornithology for Beginners, uses parodic illustrations and comic verse to teach readers to tell birds from flowers, with a playful tone and close interplay of text and image. Animal Analogues: Verses and Illustrations continues this combined style of verse and picture, using analogy to explain animal forms and habits. The Man Who Rocked the Earth turns to science fiction, imagining a catastrophe that shakes the earth. Because public sources are limited, biographical details are difficult to trace, yet the works at hand show an author skilled at presenting natural knowledge in a light, witty manner and at moving between different genres.