Wood was born in the London borough of
Marylebone in June 1839. He became a
zoological illustrator, well known in the nineteenth century for his many
engravings for major works of
natural history including
Charles Darwin's
The Descent of Man (1871) and
Alfred Russel Wallace's
The Malay Archipelago (1869).
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 ) from
The Descent of Man, with plumes incorrectly rising from the back 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 for
he Descent of Man, drawn from observations in
London Zoo, that Wood told
Darwin did not fit his theory 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Descent of Man that "Some new illustrations have been introduced, and four of the old drawings [by Brehm] have been replaced by better ones, done from life by Mr.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==