wonders of the natural world, illustrated

That looks like a fun party.

hippo is tripping balls from the looks of things

party elephant

Sexy bear dancing

http://books.google.com/books?id=juyfAAAAMAAJ

http://i.imgur.com/6JjfuCj.jpg

via: http://papirmasse.com/art/2013/artist-interview-pat-perry

(not too nuts abt the other stuff)

bio div library just added a bunch of new animal illustrations, including hilarious ones like "how ya like me now" flying squirrel

http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7298/8949592281_3183c213b3.jpg

and the simply named "torrid jerboa"

http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7447/8949613047_e34b17c72f.jpg

Right thread for this?

http://io9.com/how-europeans-imagined-exotic-animals-centuries-ago-ba-1545362205

this thread is wonderful + makes me super happy

https://fbcdn-sphotos-a-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-xpa1/v/t1.0-9/1916440_1265018098540_2762066_n.jpg?oh=e1000519a0a851bbc028204344f9b8f2&oe=5524ED5C&__gda__=1433279661_542d56256fe86320171218461d45af6c

https://manboobz.files.wordpress.com/2015/02/pitcher_plants_-_pflanzenleben.jpg?w=1182&h=1154

https://farm8.staticflickr.com/7613/16775579422_b591c94601_b.jpg

“A Group of Carnations”, a plate from Robert Thornton’s Temple of Flora (1807) – Source.

http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8200/8166830537_4902064477_o.jpg

http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8204/8166859510_bfa3ef4b5a_o.jpg

http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7126/8166859448_3e950cd893_o.jpg

Source

love this thread

here are some from Histoire Naturelle des Indes (or "the Drake manuscript") ca. 1586
http://www.themorgan.org/collection/Histoire-Naturelle-des-Indes

http://thenonist.com/images/uploads/drk.mantte.jpg
MANTTE (Manta Ray)
This fish is very large and no less vicious. When the negroes dive in the sea for pearls it jumps on them to make them drown and afterward eats them.

http://thenonist.com/images/uploads/drk.centpierne.jpg
CENT PIERNE (Centipede)
A very poisonous beast. It feeds in places where there is wine and vinegar. It only moves around at night. A person who has been bitten by this animal lives only for twenty-four hours afterwards. It finds the Indians in their beds in order to kill them.

http://thenonist.com/images/uploads/drk.cappe.jpg
CHALIRATI (Crocodile), PECHE ESPADE (Sawfish), and CAPPE (Eel)

http://thenonist.com/images/uploads/drk.periqitelegere.jpg
PERIQITE LEGERE (Sloth)
The nature of this animal is to climb with its belly uppermost and, climbing this way, it moves faster than a man could on foot. The skin of this animal is very excellent for people suffering from the falling sickness (epilepsy). The head of the afflicted is covered with it and then one realizes how effective the skin is.

http://thenonist.com/images/uploads/drk.sagovai.jpg
PORC EPIC SAVVAGE (Wild Porcupine), SAGOVAI (Monkey), and CRABLE SAVVAGE (Scorpion)

http://thenonist.com/images/uploads/drk.tiberon.jpg
TIBERON (Shark)
This fish is very vicious in the sea so that when a sailor throws himself in the water for some reason this fish turns on his back and tears out a leg or an arm and eats it.

http://pbs.twimg.com/media/BtpLAKACAAApCgR.jpg
Marganahv (Cuckoo)
Bird living in the woods is very excellent food.

http://36.media.tumblr.com/61988df9237b7955517c7481172ce6e7/tumblr_n9gf6k0pdq1rl1rfao1_500.jpg
Povlle Dv Perov (Hen from Peru)
This bird takes shelter in smoky places where one makes a fire and when it can get into a garden it eats the melons.

a few more

http://thenonist.com/images/uploads/drk.monnebarbve.jpg
MONNE BARBVE (Bearded Mona)
This animal is the size of a greyhound. When it sees people in the woods it breaks off branches and throws them at the men. Their habitat is normally in the forests between Nombre de Dios and Panama.

http://thenonist.com/images/uploads/drk.movqvites.jpg
MOVQITES (Mosquito)
They are small flies which are so small that one cannot see them, they are very dangerous. When there is no wind and the weather is calm, they come in droves attacking people, stinging them in such a manner that one would take them for lepers. Where they bite, the flesh swells up like a pea and if one kills said flies where they have stung, this protects them from the swelling. The Indians make a fire in their houses in order to keep them away and they only appear at night, retreating during the day close to the sea in the sand.

http://thenonist.com/images/uploads/drk.tigrefermilliere.jpg
TIGRE FERMILLIERE (Tiger and Anteater)
Savage beast. However, whenever this small animal called anteater encounters a tiger looking for prey it turns on its back and throws itself on the tiger's neck and pierces its throat with its snout and claws and does not release him until he is dead on that spot.

http://thenonist.com/images/uploads/drk.piovchedemer.jpg
PIOVCHE DE MER
This is as valuable as a louse.

http://thenonist.com/images/uploads/drk.cifre.jpg
CIFRE (Monkey)
This is a very agile beast. The Indians cannot tame it or feed it for they die of grief and do not eat in captivity. They have a face like a human and are very mischievous and rebellious and throw themselves against people mainly in their faces and eyes.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/de/Haeckel_Discomedusae_8.jpg/800px-Haeckel_Discomedusae_8.jpg

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/7a/Haeckel_Lacertilia.jpg/376px-Haeckel_Lacertilia.jpg

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/8e/Haeckel_Trochilidae.jpg/800px-Haeckel_Trochilidae.jpg

Source:Kunsformen der Natur

those are ernst haeckel, discussed upthread

beautiful

still thinking about the Temple of Flora illustrations (posted by mordy on march 20). like how the flowers are heroically, monumentally foregrounded, against a capital R Romantic landscape of mountains & brooding clouds. something something sublime something microcosm macrocosm something.

just the sense that that small thing— that particular flower and that particular species of flower— shares in the ephemeral glory of being (like & alongside us humans, appearing on the cosmic stage)

had not read source until today; attendant text fantastic, e.g. for the “Dragon Arum”:

SHE comes peeping from her purple crest with mischief fraught: from her green covert projects a horrid spear of darkest jet, which she brandishes aloft: issuing from her nostrils flies a noisome vapour, infecting the ambient air: her hundred arms are interspersed with white, as in the garments of the inquisition; and on her swollen trunk are observed the speckles of a mighty dragon; her sex is strangely intermingled with the opposite ! confusion dire ! -all framed for horror; or kind to warn the traveller that her fruits are poison-berries, grateful to the sight but fatal to the taste; such is the plan of PROVIDENCE, and such HER wise resolves.

Also caption in article: “Note the depiction in the distance of a volcano mid-spurt” (ha, had noticed the O’Keefesque sexual forms but had not noticed that).

I was tempted to buy an enormous Italian-language edition of the Comte de Buffon's Uccelli yesterday but would have struggled to carry it home.

http://i.imgur.com/Lxsg6Ee.jpg

i enjoyed the wikipedia entry on comte de buffon

At one point, Buffon propounded a theory that nature in the New World was inferior to that of Eurasia. He argued that the Americas were lacking in large and powerful creatures, and that even the people were less virile than their European counterparts. He ascribed this inferiority to the marsh odors and dense forests of the American continent. These remarks so incensed Thomas Jefferson that he dispatched twenty soldiers to the New Hampshire woods to find a bull moose for Buffon as proof of the "stature and majesty of American quadrupeds".[8] Buffon later admitted his error.

of course the biggest New World mammals were [probably] hunted to extinction long before Europeans ever made it over

http://www.popsci.com/sites/popsci.com/files/styles/small_1x_/public/import/2013/images/2011/01/mammoth.jpg

this is an excellent revive

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/23354/23354-h/images/fig203m.jpg
Monstrous pear, showing extension and ramification of the succulent floral axis. The bases of the sepals are also succulent

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/23354/23354-h/images/fig162m.jpg
in Papaver bracteatum a considerable number of the stamens sometimes become developed into pistils, especially those which are nearest to the centre of the flower, and in these flowers the filaments are said to become the ovaries, while the anthers are curled so as to resemble stigmas

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/23354/23354-h/images/fig058s.jpg
Receptacle of strawberry prolonged into a leafy branch

whoops :-(
if you want to check em out...

Vegetable Teratology: An Account of the Principal Deviations from the Usual Construction of Plants

...they were considered as monsters to be shunned, as lawless deviations from the ordinary rule, unworthy the attention of botanists, or at best as objects of mere curiosity. By those whose notions of structure and conformation did not extend beyond the details necessary to distinguish one species from another, or to describe the salient features of a plant in technical language; whose acquaintance with botanical science might almost be said to consist in the conventional application of a number of arbitrary terms, or in the recollection of a number of names, teratology was regarded as a chaos whose meaningless confusion it were vain to attempt to render intelligible,—as a barren field not worth the labour of tillage.

http://www.slate.com/content/dam/slate/blogs/the_vault/2015/04/17/LgWildflowerMap.jpg

some great portraits in this slideshow:
http://lens.blogs.nytimes.com//2014/04/01/an-evolving-view-of-animals/

not exactly related but this person seems to really embrace the same aesthetic/scientific intersection as the people who sell pages from a botanical illustration book on etsy

http://www.dnainfo.com/chicago/20150512/humboldt-park/traveling-taxidermy-instructor-opens-chicago-storefront-niche-lab

there is a $400 make your own taxidermied baby skunk class

i think i finally decided that i do want an ernst haeckel-inspired tattoo

it only took me almost 14 years!!

also this thread is a treasure -- i had no recollection of posting so much lol

i was about to say before i even read your comment LL, this is a glorious thread

Tattoo appt is this week!! Could not be more excited.

It’s done. Now I want like 60 more.

Cool! What did you get?

A radiolarian! If you go to the Project Gutenberg link w Haeckel’s illustrations from the Challenger expedition, it’s top left on plate 81

https://www.gutenberg.org/files/44527/44527-h/images/plate081.jpg

To clarify—It’s my artist’s rendering of the Haeckel illustration.

Oh, brilliant - I bet that looks amazing.

an oldie

Always enjoy sharing these brainstem reconstructions by Lewis Weed (1914) - made by tracing outlines on transverse sections, making paper cutouts, stacking them in register and drawing the result ... pic.twitter.com/KmFu7N2Abu

— Matt Kirkcaldie (@MKirkcaldie) October 31, 2021