Judge, 1912-08-24 · page 12 of 24
Judge — August 24, 1912 — page 12: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This is a humorous mock-educational piece satirizing pseudo-scientific explanations of animal behavior. The text delivers absurdist "facts" about ducks—claiming they're hybrids of West Point and Annapolis (military academies), that they "sit pat" rather than swim, and that their toes are "amalgamated" under one management. The satire's main target appears to be the fashion of the era: the text compares an "obese woman in a hobble skirt" to a duck's awkward waddling locomotion. Hobble skirts (restrictive skirts that forced women to take tiny steps) were a contemporary fashion trend, and the joke mocks both the garment's impracticality and women who wore them. The illustrations show hunters shooting ducks and children chasing them—visual gags accompanying the deadpan, faux-scientific commentary. The overall effect ridicules both pseudo-intellectual animal descriptions and women's fashionable but absurd clothing choices.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
UNNATURAL HISTORY LESSONS Lesson—The Duck. HE DUCK is partly West Point and partly Annap- olis He is equally at home on terra firma and on the bosom of a maring landscape. He cannot be said to swim, He simply sits pat and exerts his twin propellers when he desires to locomote. His various toes are amalgamated under one management -a device invented by the duck himself and found very practical and convenient. You can hunt wild ducks wherever you wish, but you will find them only here and there—mostly there. Decoys are often used when hunting ducks. They are dead and much easier to shoot than live ones, as they stay put and do not disappear when missed. It is great sport to shoot a duck on the wing. You can hit him on the wing more easily than on any other part of his anatomy. A duck, when pleased, displeased or stirred to any form of emotion, remarks, ‘‘Quack!'’ This is really the only appropriate thing for a duck to say. Think how silly it would sound saying, ‘‘Bow wow!"’ or “*Moo!’’ Quack doctors are so called because they could not eat if it were not for their bills. A duck treads water much more gracefully than she does land. A very obese woman in a hobble skirt some- what resembles a duck in her manner of perambula- tion. The class may now run home and chase the duck for their pas and mas. —Cartewn G. Garretan. ~~ we en at comicbooks.com