Aristotle’s History of Animals turns up in the most unexpected Victorian places. The Illustrated London News for 11 September 1847 ran a feature on lobster fishing in the harbour at Folkestone, with attractive sketches by Edward Duncan, famous water-colourist who specialised in marine subjects and seascapes (pictured below).

Part of the text was a paraphrase of Aristotle’s remarkably detailed accounts of the lobster in HA book 4, where he describes its colour, legs, claws, teeth, shell, mouth, eyes and thorax; in book 5, he describes the activities of lobster fishermen around the Hellespont and Thasos, just as the ILN reports on the fishermen of Folkestone and elsewhere in Britain and Norway.