The Old Wife fish (Enoplosus armatus), taken by Rontgen ray process

The “Old Wife” is a saltwater fish, and was given its rather derogatory colloquial name by the screeching sound it makes by grinding its teeth together after being caught. It’s supposedly akin to nails on a chalkboard.

Illustrated Handbook. Aquarium, Picture Salon, Cyclorama, Museum, and Technological Collections. Compiled by James E. Sherrard.

Desert Cat

The desert cat was ubiquitous in Egypt when it was settled by the first agricultural humans, thousands of years before recorded history. For a while, since the desert cat (and other cat species) did not compete with them for food or try to eat them, humanoids invited them to come around and did not attack them. The cats controlled the mice and snakes that frequented the valuable granaries and got easy meals; humanoids got grain that wasn’t spoiled or consumed by rats and mice, and were not threatened by the snakes that came around to eat them.

Though cats did not contribute significantly to the actual survival of humans, they were still seen as intelligent, motherly, a manifestation of fertility and protection, and loved as much as relatives. 

When a cat belonging to someone died (as opposed to the semi-ferals that still wandered the granarie,s long after domestication), they were expected to go into the same level of mourning as proceeding the death of an immediate family member, including shaving off their eyebrows, somber dress, and (if they could afford it) commissioning their cat to be mummified.

Handbook to Carnivora. Part I: Cats, Civets, and Mungooses. Richard Lydekker, 1896.

Those who are passed out are not necessarily drunk! 

All I can picture is Victorian London, with roads littered with passed-out drunks, and one man who wasn’t actually drunk being looked past as if it’s totally normal to be unconscious in public.

Dr. Foote’s Hand-Book of Health-Hints and Ready Recipes. Foote, 1882.

Questionable Health Tips Night:

LAWL CURRY-COMB. I C WUT U DID THAR.

I wonder if literally tin-lining the stomach would be less irritating to Dr. Foote than the “curry-comb” that curry is.

Dr. Foote’s Hand-Book of Health-Hints and Ready Recipes. E.B. Foote, 1882.

Questionable Health Tips Night:

Don’t be a farmer’s wife. You WILL go crazy.

Dr. Foote’s Hand-Book of Health-Hints and Ready Recipes. E.B. Foote, 1882.

Questionable Health Tips Night:

I think Dr. Foote is in the stockings business. Clearly. Why else would he want us to destroy perfectly good stockings? 

Dr. Foote’s Hand-Book of Health-Hints and Ready Recipes. E.B. Foote, 1882.

What I gather from this is…you need to breathe less. You’re poisoning the air around you by breathing! Your plants cannot handle it!

Click through to embiggen and read.

Dr. Foote’s Handbook of Health-Hints and Handy Recipes. Dr. Foote, 1882.

Hipitty hop, hipitty hop…

Jerboas can hop faster than a human can run! They don’t walk around like normal gerbils or mice, but walk upright or hop. They’re like little kangaroos!

I think I quite agree with the caption “The best kind of bird on a hat.” 

Fashions of the time had largely moved past the curious style of having practically an entire bird on the hat that was so popular at the beginning of the 20th century, but some smaller toques and day hats still featured long feathers. 

A fashionable turn-of-the-century hat for the high-society lady of the East Coast of the United States:

Photograph from Book of Birds: Common Birds in North America. Produced by National Geographic, 1918.

“Edible Frog” (Rana esculenta) and Natterjack Toad (Epidalea calamita).

British Reptiles, Amphibians, and Fresh-water Fishes. W. Percival Westell, 1920.

From Diseases of the Eye: a handbook of opthalmic practice for students and practitioners. George E. DeSchweinitz, 1912.

“The People’s Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English; or, Medicine Simplified” by R.V. Pierce. 1890, 24th edition.

Echidna!

From A Handbook to the Masupialia and Monotremata by Richard Lydekker. 1896.

Part of the Lloyd’s Natural History series.