From Eggs: Facts and Fancies About Them by Anna Barrows, 1890.

Here's a yew at the center of a labyrinth (Cassell's, 1896), but recall that "You [like the yew] are at the center of the maze" (Howard A. Sherman, The First Mile, 2005).

From Idea de un Principe Politico Christiano, 1642.

Roosevelt devours submarines in Die Muskete, 1917.

Here's a precursor to Cruella de Vil, over half a century before Dodie Smith's 1956 novel The Hundred and One Dalmatians.  From Jugend, 1900.

Can you make out the Dickens quotation that serves as the motto?  There was a time when even so-called pseudo-science sought nothing but "facts, facts, facts."  Today, we're hard pressed to name any institution that could in good faith adopt such a motto.  The media?  Political pollsters?  Climatologists?  Any other white-coat wearer of what Robert Anton Wilson dubbed the New Inquisition?  Selections from the Papers of the Phasmatological Society, 1882.

"In France, recently, marvellous cures in melancholia have been effected by a process of mental suggestion.  The patient writes on the wall of his room in luminous paint the words 'I am gay.'  The rest depends upon the extent of his faith."  From The Sketch, 1903.

From It's Not My Fault! by Stevens and Withrow.

Here's a love potion from The Windsor Magazine, 1902.

INSTRUCTIONS: Click to reveal the larger scene.

Which bird do you prefer?  If you chose the dotted bird, don't worry.  "The preference for a dotted bird is not due to some dominating naive preference for the wild type plumage" (Acta XX Congressus Internationalis Ornithologici, 1991).

Here's the Monster Crinoline from the carnival at Turin, via the Illustrated News, 1858.

From Die Säugthiere in Abbildungen Nach der Natur, 1774.

This Atlantic City pier has been deemed "No Good.".