Two of the worst of all lines of English poetry, written in 1799 by John Hookham Frere:
'The feather'd race with pinions skim the air -
Not so the mackerel, and still less the bear!'
However poor that verse, it has a moral. The lines come from Frere's somewhat neglected work 'The Progress of Man; Poetry of the Anti-Jacobin'. Birds, Bears and fish carry a political message. Things are as they are and it is folly to change them. The French Revolution disturbed the God-given order: to proclaim the rights of man was as absurd as to suggest that mankind - or even bears - might fly.

(An historical sketch of the progress of opinion on the origin of species)

According to a 1991 opinion poll, a hundred million Americans believe that 'God created man pretty much in his present form at one time during the last tn thusand years'.

(Introduction)

Man has a strange relationship with his domestic animals. The Victorian explorer William Burchell found himself unable to eat zebra when he was near starvation in Africa, because of its resemblance to his favourite mare.

(Chapter I)