Politicians depicted as caterpillars

In this etching, A. S. Boyd renders political figures as grotesque caterpillars crawling across barren ground beneath gnarled trees. The human heads grafted onto segmented, worm-like bodies create an effect of degradation and parasitism—a visual argument that politicians consume without producing, feeding on the body politic. Boyd works in the tradition of European print satire from Gillray through Daumier, where caricature weaponizes anatomy to expose moral character. The metamorphic imagery suggests arrested development: these creatures remain larval, incomplete, incapable of transformation into anything beneficial. The etching's fine line work and sharp contrasts between figure and void intensify the sense of corruption. Such political zoomorphism—depicting opponents as insects or vermin—carried class and ethnic prejudices endemic to period satire, embedding contempt within formal innovation.