Credit: ©The Royal Society
    Image number: RS.19685

    Porcupine and hedgehog

    Date
    1688
    Creator
    Richard Waller (1660 - 1715, British) , Naturalist
    After
    the elder Le Clerc (1637 - 1714, French) , Artist
    Object type
    Library reference
    57977
    Material
    Technique
    Dimensions
    height (page): 300mm
    width (page): 200mm
    height (print): 205mm
    width (print): 155mm
    Subject
    Content object
    nature
       > animal
    Description
    Zoological and anatomical study of a porcupine and hedgehog, both shown in left profile, the former with its quills raised [below] and dissected, with various of its internal organs depicted, including the spleen, colon, bladder and kidneys [above].

    Inscribed above: ‘pag. 146’

    Written in the associated explanation: ‘THE lower Figure represents the difference of these two Species of Animals, which are unlike not only in their size, but also in their prickles, which are all of one sort in the Hedge-hog, and much shorter, in proportion to the Body, than in the Porcupine’.

    Unnumbered plate from a translated edition of Charles Perrault’s Memoires pour servir à l'histoire naturelle des animaux: Memoir's for a natural history of animals containing the anatomical descriptions of several creatures dissected by the Royal Academy of Sciences at Paris, Englished by A.P. (London, 1688). A work of comparative anatomy featuring specimens from the Royal menageries at Vincennes and Versailles.

    Charles Perrault (1628-1703) was a French author, naturalist and member of the Académie Française. The translator (‘A. P’), Alexander Pitfeild (c.1658-1728), was a merchant and Fellow of the Royal Society, elected in 1684, Council Member throughout the late 17th century and Treasurer between 1700-1728.
    Associated place
    <The World>
       > Europe
          > France
    <The World>
       > Europe
          > United Kingdom
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