For #WorldJellyfishDay 🪼:
Compass Jellyfish (Chrysaora hysoscella), native to coastal temperate NE Atlantic Ocean.
1. Plate XXVII from Philip Henry Gosse's (English, 1810-1888) A Naturalist's Rambles on the Devonshire Coast, 1853
2. glass model from the Cornell Collection of Blaschka Invertebrate Models, c. 1882
For #InternationalSnowLeopardDay :
Ounce (Snow Leopard)
Plate VI in A handbook to the carnivora : part 1 : cats, civets, and mongooses by Richard Lydekker, London, 1896
via BHL
For #InternationalSlothDay 🦥:
Today is also #AfricanPenguinAwarenessDay!
Plate by Joseph Smit (1836–1929) from “Report on the birds collected during the voyage of H.M.S. Challenger during the years 1873-76” (1881).
🚨 The African Penguin (Spheniscus demersus) is an #EndangeredSpecies.
For #InternationalRaccoonAppreciationDay 🦝:
“Raton laveur” - French for “washing rat,” aka a Common Raccoon (Procyon lotor).
Mammiferes Pl.7B in Charles d'Orbigny’s Dictionnaire universel d'histoire naturelle, Atlas t.1, Paris, 1849.
Via BHL
For #NationalHummingbirdDay:
Ernst Haeckel (German, 1834-1919)
“Trochilidae - Kolibris (Hummingbirds)”, chromolithograph, Pl. 99 in Kunstformen der Natur (1899-1904).
1. Male Ruby-throated Hummingbird
2. Male Horned Sungem
3. Male Crimson Topaz
4. Male Red-tailed Comet
5. Male Tufted Coquette
6. Male Sword-billed Hummingbird
7. Buff-tailed Sicklebill
8. Male Dot-eared Coquette
9. Male White-vented Violetear
10. Male Hooded Visorbearer
11. Female Juan Fernández Firecrown
12. Male Booted Racket-tail
“Black Persian (Painted specially by Madame Henriette Ronner.)”
Plate 1 in The Book of the Cat by Frances Simpson (London, 1903)
Via BHL
Maurice Pillard Verneuil (French, 1869 – 1942) “Lézard" Plate 25 in L’animal dans la décoration (Paris, 1897) NYPL collection
“Denticulated Oyster” (Striostrea denticulata)
illustration by R. P. Nodder in George Shaw’s The naturalist's miscellany Vol. 16, London, 1804-5
Via BHL
“Rhamphostoma schlegelii,” now Tomistoma schlegelii
Plate 106 in Bilder-Atlas zur wissenschaftlich-populären Naturgeschichte der Wirbelthiere, Wien, 1867
via BHL
The Tomistoma, aka False Gharial, is an endangered freshwater crocodilian of the family Gavialidae native to Peninsular Malaysia, Borneo, Sumatra & Java.
Conrad Gessner (Swiss, 1516-1565) De Tigride (The Tiger), hand-colored woodcut illustration on page 1060 of Historiae animalium Vol. 1, published 1551. National Library of Medicine (NLM) collection
"Pond Life" - frontispiece to Historia naturalis ranarum nostratium by August Johann Rösel von Rosenhof (German, 1705-1759), Nuremberg, 1758. British Library collection
More about this work on the BHL blog: An Illustrated Natural History of German Frogs: Rösel’s Historia Naturalis Ranarum Nostratium
Dogs, top half of Plate 42 from Alphonse Mucha's Documents Decoratifs, Paris, 1901-2.
Frontispiece [Peaceable Kingdom - landscape with birds and animals] of The Naturalists Companion... by Kenelm Henry Digby (Irish, 1800-1880), c.1812-6.
This intriguing 544-page manuscript, including 440 watercolors (!), was recently digitized by Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales: https://collection.sl.nsw.gov.au/record/nM7lWAVY
Full title: The Naturalists Companion containing drawings with suitable descriptions of a vast variety of Quadrupeds, Birds, Fishes, Serpent and Insects; & accurately copied either from Living Animals or from the stuffed Specimens in the Museums of the College and Dublin Society, to which is added drawings of several antiquities, natural productions &c containd in those Museums -- illustrated manuscript by Kenelm Henry Digby
For #CoralReefAwarenessWeek:
Anton Seder (Germany 1850 - France 1916) Art Nouveau fish designs, Plates 3 & 7 in Das Thier in der decorativen Kunst (1896)
