The Platypus and the Mermaid: And Other Figments of the Classifying Imagination - Paperbackby Harriet Ritvo (Author) "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 Victorian age for classifying and categorizing every new specimen, plant or animal, that British explorers and