A Phenomenal Fauna

In Short — 70 to 100 words

A Phenomenal Fauna is a whimsical illustrated bestiary of comic verse by Carolyn Wells, featuring absurd hybrid creatures born from English idioms, domestic objects, and slang—such as the feather-boa serpent of temptation, the iron-ranged iron spider, and the high-horse ridden by tumbling scoffers. Through compact six-line stanzas, Wells maps a mock-taxonomic world where language takes literal, zoological shape. It endures as a sharp, playful artifact of turn-of-the-century light verse, pairing linguistic punning with Oliver Hereford’s visual conceit, offering modern readers a crisp masterclass in Victorian-era nonsense economy.

The Story — 410 to 550 words

Because this is a bestiary rather than a narrative novel, the "arc" is an intellectual and atmospheric procession rather than a plot with a protagonist. The sequence opens at dawn with the "Reg'lar Lark," establishing a mock-earnest zoological tone that immediately pivots into the ontological uncertainty of the "Humbug" and the hollow English pedigree of the "Poppycock."

From these conceptual foundations, the catalog descends into domestic and rural absurdities. The brainless "Haycock" bides beside his hay-hen; the "Powder-Monkey" traces genealogical descent to the Dames and Daughters of the Revolution; and the "Tree Calf" nests aloft like its moon-jumping ancestor. The natural and cultural worlds blur further as marine and terrestrial figures twist expectations: the "Military Frog" lacks edible hind legs, the "Feather Boa" re-enacts Eden with serpent-feather charm, and the midnight "Brick Bat" flies straight toward a back garden gate with a power behind the thrown.

Midway, the catalog cataloging intensifies its domestic and mechanical surrealism. The "Cat O' Nine Tails" ignores mice and brine-free fish to jump upon poor Jack's back; the "Round Robin" delivers secret winged messages; the headless three-legged "Iron Spider" defies Miss Muffet's terror; and the "Bookworm" devours stupid library cores. Time becomes an insect ("Time Flies" alias Tempus Fugit), while food and drink materialize as fauna: the doughnut-and-cheese-loving "Apple Bee," the cheese-bred "Welsh Rabbit" followed by nightmare, and the poached, stag-party "Golden Buck."

As the catalog moves toward its twilight and urban migration phase, the tone sharpens against institutional and social friction. The "Jail-bird" droops behind bars while polite ladies bring nosegays; the hard-favored "Royal Seal" stamps and punches under lock and key; the three-legged "Fire Dogs" wait by evening hearths; and the brine-dipped "Mackerel Kit" yearns for fish. Outdoor leisure and labor interlock via the "Golf Lynx," the heavy-duty "Traveling Crane," the abbey-frequenting "Flying Buttress" (vulnerable to ostriches), the undertow-circling "Sea Puss," and the thousand-ton "Battering Ram."

The final movement confronts artificiality, social pretense, and human bellicosity. The string-and-leather "Spring Chicken" risks plunging its carver into gloom; the gamecock "Shuttlecock" climbs high; the tramp-deterring "Saw-Buck" inflicts fever; the schoolboy-favorite "Pigeon Toad" resists eviction; the pestiferous "Bumblepuppy" haunts club tables; the honest chained "Watch Dog" and the scream-ready ten-dollar "Gold Eagle" measure monetary value. Night brings the shrinking "Bugbear" and the head-and-tailless "Irish Bull" choking John with laughter. Finally, the migration of hayseed-eating "jays" to the winter city precedes humanity tracing ancestry not to apes but to bellicose "Forebears" like Ursa Major, ending with jockeys tumbling off the difficult "High Horse."

How It Unfolds — 290 to 400 words

• The dawn chorus and taxonomic doubt

The sequence opens with the jauntily homeward-wending lark, immediately questioning whether humbugs exist and dismissing the hollow-worded English poppycock.

• Domestic landscape and evolutionary jests

Brainless haycocks bide in meadows while powder-monkeys found revolutionary lineages and tree calves nest where ancestral cows once cleared the moon.

• Domestic fauna collide with myth

Feather-boa serpents tempt modern Eves, midnight brick bats strike back-gate cats, and marine-detached cats-o'-nine-tails leap onto poor Jack's back.

• Insects, spiders, and library pests

Headless three-legged iron spiders ignore Miss Muffet while bookworms bore through stupid cores and time-flies sting conscience into action.

• Gastronomy walks and bites

Apple bees buzz for cheese and tea, Welsh rabbits summon nocturnal nightmares, and golden bucks prompt stag-party horns of cheer.

• Domestic duty and industrial muscle

Three-legged fire dogs guard hearths, traveling cranes lift burdens, flying buttresses court abbey walls before ostriches, and battering rams weigh a thousand tons.

• Artificial fowl and urban friction

Spring chickens require oiled strings to save carvers from gloom, jail-birds receive floral nosegays, and royal seals stamp in frustration.

• The final descent of pretense

Bugbears shrink by daylight, Irish bulls divide jovial parties from stolid John, hayseed-eating jays migrate cityward, and brawn-baffled jockeys tumble off high horses.

The People — 200 to 280 words

Because this is a bestiary, the "people" are composite cultural archetypes, domestic occupants, and allegorical figures populating the animal frames.

Jack serves as the battered coastal sailor or worker whom the "Cat O' Nine Tails" jumps upon and makes lively, enduring unwanted nautical-domestic friction. Miss Muffet haunts the conceptual background, though her terror is retroactively neutralized by the revelation that the "Iron Spider" is headless and three-legged, changing how we measure nursery dread. The Housewife faces the tramp applying for coffee or apple-pies, only to watch him flee when seized with "Saw-Book Fever." The Credulous Person regales ears with the English "Poppycock," falling for fine feathers that mask empty words.

The Schoolboy reliably harbors the "Pigeon Toad," defying adult efforts at eviction with hopping persistence. The Diner or Clubmember scorns yet must accept the pestiferous "Bumblepuppy" at table or club. The Carver faces carving the string-and-leather "Spring Chicken," risking gloom if springs go un-oiled. The Tramp applies for roadside charity before retreating from the saw-buck. The Historical Novelist relies on the "Tomahawk"—a feathered bird of prey clutching pale hair—to sustain gory, grewsome romance. The Jockey mounts the "High Horse" with brawn and brain, only to tumble off under the weight of pride. Across all figures, human agency is reactive: people groom, feed, fear, ride, or tumble off creatures that literalize their own cultural habits.

In Its Own Voice — 120 to 170 words

The Reg'lar Lark's a very gay old Bird; At sunrise often may his voice be heard

As jauntily he wends his homeward way, And trills a fresh and merry roundelay.

And some old, wise philosopher has said: Rise with a lark, and with a lark to bed.

Opening the collection, this stanza establishes the mock-ornithological tone and playful moral inversion.

The little Brick Bat could not fly alone,-- Oh, no; there is a power behind the thrown.

This couplet delivers a deadpan pun linking missile flight to political causality.

The Bookworm's an uninteresting grub, Whether he's all alone or in a club.

This observation captures the dry sociological disdain directed at institutional reading habits.

Fine feathers do not always make fine birds.

This proverb anchors the hollow display of the English-bred poppycock.

What It's Really About — 100 to 140 words

The book investigates how language secretes mythology into daily life. Wells interrogates the gap between signifier and zoological reality: if idioms ("time flies," "golden buck," "high horse," "black sheep") or artifacts ("saw-buck," "fire dogs," "shuttlecock") are granted animal bodies, what do they expose about human credulity, social pretense, and class anxiety?

The underlying argument is satirical nominalism. Society populates its mental and physical landscape with phantom hazards (bugbears, humbugs, poppycocks) while domesticating real tools into beasts of burden or moral barometers. Evolution, scientific pedigree (from monkeys or Ursa Major), and historical romance are treated as taxonomic jokes. The question beneath the plot is simple: why do humans prefer populating their world with self-made linguistic chimeras rather than plain facts?

Why Read It Today — 160 to 210 words

Readers who love Edward Lear, Lewis Carroll, Ogden Nash, or the sharp archival humor of Life magazine will delight in this compact gallery. Reading it feels like flipping through an illustrated Victorian parlor game where dead metaphors bite back. What stays with you is the architectural economy of the verse—six brisk lines per beast—and Oliver Hereford's conceptual shadows lingering behind the page.

Honesty requires naming its friction points. Length is slight: it is a brisk gallery rather than an immersive narrative, reading out in twenty minutes. Dialect and period slang—such as "gamy," "hay-hen," "stag-party" dining codes, or Victorian patriotic references to Dames of the Revolution—require occasional mental translation for contemporary general readers. Period racial or ethnic shorthand surfaces lightly in tropes like the "Irish Bull" (treating national wit as stock linguistic confusion), though it functions as Victorian conversational table-talk rather than malice.

Approach it not as a children's picture book of today, compact with moral padding, but as a lean adult-and-child cross-over artifact. It rewards slow savoring of single stanzas over linear binge-reading, offering a clean antidote to modern marketing hype with pure, cabinet-of-curiosities wit.