The Lungfish and the Unicorn: An excursion into romantic zoology

by Willy Ley

Willy Ley says that the lungfish goes into "estivation", a summer sleep as opposed to hibernation. He-or she-merely wraps up in river-mud, then waits until the water dissolves the mud cake, and emerges no whit emaciated. Such is the history of the original edition of this book, The Lungfish and the Unicorn, first published in 1941. A war casualty when the firm which published it was drafted out of existence, it was taken over by The Viking Press. The bound stock was quickly exhausted, and the sheets for a new binding, as well as the plates, were found to have disappeared, no doubt victims of a conservation drive. But interest in the book refused to die, and now it comes out of estivation not only unemaciated but much plumper than it was before. Half of the chapters are new or completely rewritten, nearly all the others are partially rewritten, and there are many delightful new illustrations.

Here is a remarkable zoo of strange beasts from the far corners of the world, creatures zoological or mythical, and speculation as to "...what else might there be hiding in the Rainy Forest...."

Willy Ley brings unique gifts to the writing of this intriguing volume. Trained with German thoroughness in zoology and paleontology and science in general, he also possesses an unorthodox inquisitiveness into the dark unknowns. We heartily greet his "de-estivated" book.

Genres: Animals, Nonfiction, Science

298 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1941

About the author

Willy Ley (sometimes credited as Willie Ley) was a German-American science writer and space advocate who helped popularize rocketry and spaceflight in both Germany and the United States. The crater Ley on the far side of the Moon is named in his honor.

Reviews

[Christine]

This book took me a while to get through but by no means was it boring or difficult to read (I just got busy with other things). For being published in 1941, it sounds modern. It's a zoology book but not like a "textbook". It's written with a lot of prose. Broken into three sections covering everything from unicorns (rhinos), the extinction of dodos, to creating new orders in the animal kingdom (monotremes).

[J]

First of all this is definitely an older book so the reader who opens it will need to be aware that there are definitely some terms used that are no more permissible or even thoughts. But as such that doesn't change the content or the reading of this particular book in my opinion.

The whole concept of combining these three titular creatures is what sparked my curiosity with this book and if you flip the order around - the unicorn, the dodo and the lungfish than you will find the animals in the same order with each representing a certain part of the book. As a result the first part is about mythical creatures, the second part is about creatures becoming extinct under man's eyes and the last is representative of finding living fossils that are still hidden around the world. I love these sections' focals while at first I was thinking the mythicals should have been maybe at the end of the book but the book is a study of zoological evolution.

So what is romantic zoology? The book didn't quite cover that definition in my opinion but I think it involves the animals that have caught the imaginations of people and trying to flesh out their stories so we get to know them as much as we can. As a result there are only a handful of animals that have been included instead of exploring every single species and individual that is out there. The loss of variety, though, is made up for in the telling of the sagas of these animals and how zoological science has grown.

And what makes this really special to me at least is that the author took the time to carefully weave his story so they include other species such as the tragic loss of the aurochs and the wizent even as their American cousin the bison became a successful save or how the discovery of the okapi led also to the discovery of the pygmy hippopotamus and the suggestions of the similarity between the Dragon of the Ishtar Gate may be suggestive perhaps of other saurian creatures like Mokele-Mbembe tucked in the unexplored heart of the African jungle.

At the same time this is the story of the tragicness of man's greed but also a story of his redemptive persistence. There are failure stories but at the same time stories of success while the reader is given a primary view of how zoology, paleontology, paleogeography and other related studies grew-up to be what they are known today. So yes it is a story of science just as much as it is a story of animals.

There is one point-of-view that I don't agree with the author on and that is his belief of how very specialized animals are meant to become extinct once their very specialized niches are changed thus as a result mankind was just helping Nature along. Although I can see what he is saying and understand I also think there is more to it than that, especially if like the Stellar sea cow was able to survive what would have killed it off earlier, or the fact that the passenger pigeon didn't die to it being unable to adapt.

In the end if you are scientific-minded I think you would enjoy this book even if it may be outdated since the author does throw in a few comedic bits and how informative it still is. This is one book that I wouldn't mind having a copy on my own bookshelves for a chance to fall back on it when I need a more scientific fact check.