This illustration is a moment of joy and surprise in a troublingly racist work of popular science. It shows a group of surfers in Hawaii. The pleasure in the performance of the sport is infectious, as is the obvious delight of the wood engraver in using long curving lines to delineate the waves. Two other figures can just be seen swimming underwater, bottom left.
Dalziel after Johann Baptist Zwecker, ‘Surf-Swimming’, illustration for J G Wood, The Natural History of Man (London: Routledge, 1868-1870). Dalziel Archive Vol. XXII (1867), British Museum reg. no. 1913,0415.183, print no. 550. [vol 2 p. 438]
By Permission of the Trustees of The British Museum. All Rights Reserved © Sylph Editions, 2016