Thomas William Wood

Thomas William Wood (1833 – 14 February 1882 ) was an English zoological illustrator responsible for the accurate drawings in major nineteenth-century works of natural history including Darwin's The Descent of Man and Wallace's The Malay Archipelago. He studied the courtship display behaviour of pheasants, observing them closely and publishing the first description of the double-banded argus pheasant. He illustrated many books, often of birds but also of moths and mammals.

Life and work

Wood was born in Chatham, Kent in 1833. , Alfred Russel Wallace's The Malay Archipelago (1869), and articles by Alfred Newton in the 9th Edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica.

Camouflage It appears that Wallace introduced Wood to Darwin, as in a letter to Darwin of 8 March 1868 Wallace writes:

Wood was interested in insect camouflage, and Wallace again cites him in his 1895 book Natural Selection and Tropical Nature, writing that the orangetip butterfly's underwing pattern "completely assimilates with the flower heads and renders the creature very difficult to be seen".

Illustration

Wood was chosen along with other eminent Victorian era illustrators such as Joseph Wolf and Johann Baptist Zwecker for the large task of providing a set of drawings for the parson-naturalist John George Wood's Illustrated Natural History: Birds (1875). J.G. Wood (no relation), being an illustrator himself, had difficulty finding other illustrators whose work he liked; among those working on his Birds, he found Harrison Weir "always picturesque, but never correct", while T. W. Wood was the opposite, though he did like Joseph Wolf's artwork.

The English broadcaster and naturalist David Attenborough notes that in Wallace's Malay Archipelago, Wood, like earlier illustrators of the lesser bird-of-paradise, showed the male's posture wrongly, with the plumes appearing to bush out from above the wings. Attenborough observes: "It seems very odd that such an accurate and meticulous observer as Wallace did not correct him."

Many of Wood's drawings are signed with his distinctive "TWW" monogram, which he used both alone and in combination with his surname as a signature.

Gamebird display

Wood became fascinated by the display plumage of male birds such as pheasants, and in 1870 he published a description of the "lateral or one-sided" display of the male gold pheasant and the "Japanese pheasant", Phasianus versicolor. Darwin commented in the second edition of his Descent of Man that "Some new illustrations have been introduced, and four of the old drawings [by Brehm] have been replaced by better ones, done from life by Mr. T. W. Wood." Wood took the trouble to ask Darwin for a copy of the book "as I should wish to know what characters were particularly pointed out in the text". One of the new drawings was a "Side view of male Argus pheasant, while displaying before the female"; Wood based the drawing on his own careful observation of the birds in the London zoological gardens, and was praised for it by William Bernhardt Tegetmeier, the natural history editor of The Field magazine, for which Wood often worked, as "the first correct delineation of the display".

However, Wood developed his own view of the purpose of the male argus pheasant's display, which he believed was to "fascinate his lady love", while display by a male animal "undoubtedly has for its object the winning of [the female animal's] favours." Wood was prepared to disagree with Darwin, too, as he felt that the eyespots in its plumage were perfect and thus signs of special creation: "although I feel convinced of the truth of your theory of the origin of species, [the Argus pheasant's plumage] cannot be explained by it ...[but rather it] seems to point to (& almost to prove) the existence of a great artistic power."

Works illustrated by Wood

Wood, John George, illustrated by W. S. Coleman, E. Smith, T. W. Wood (1864), Our Garden Friends and Foes. Routledge, Warne, and Routledge. Wallace, Alfred Russel (1869), The Malay Archipelago. Wood, John George, illustrated by W. S. Coleman, E. Smith, T. W. Wood (1870), The Common Moths of England. George Routledge and Sons. Wood, T. W. (1871), Curiosities of Ornithology. Groombridge. Darwin, Charles (2nd edition, 1874), The Descent of Man. Beeton, Samuel Orchart. Illustrated by Harrison Weir, T. W. Wood and others (1871), Beeton's Dictionary of Natural History a Compendious Cyclopaedia of the Animal Kingdom Containing Upwards of Two Thousand Complete and Distinct Articles. Ward, Lock & Tyler. Darwin, Charles (1872), The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals. John Murray. Weir, Harrison William; T. W. Wood (1872), Wild Animals in Freedom and Captivity. Ward, Lock, and Tyler. Tegetmeier, William Bernhardt (1873), Pheasants for Coverts and Aviaries. Horace Cox. (2nd edition appeared in 1881) Wood, John George, illustrated by W. S. Coleman, H. Weir, T. W. Wood, J. Wolf, J. B. Zwecker (1875), The Illustrated Natural History: Birds. George Routledge and Sons. Wood, John George; Edward Alfred Smith; T. W. Wood (1875), Common British Beetles. George Routledge and Sons. Blyth, Edward (1881), The Natural History of the Cranes. Horace Cox. Sterndale, Robert A. (1885), Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon. Thacker, Spink, and Co. Taylor, J. E. (1889), The Playtime Naturalist. Chatto and Windus. Tegetmeier, William Bernhardt (1904), Pheasants their natural history and practical management. Horace Cox. Finn, Frank, with colour plates by unknown artists, black and white drawings by T. W. Wood (1911), Talks About Birds. A&C Black.