Credit: ©The Royal Society
    Image number: RS.15197

    Scorpion from Barbary

    Date
    27 March 1689
    Creator
    Richard Waller (1641 - 1715, British) , Naturalist
    Object type
    Archive reference number
    Manuscript page number
    p3
    Material
    Dimensions
    height (page): 333mm
    width (page): 211mm
    Subject
    Content object
    nature
       > animal
          > scorpion
    Description
    Drawings of a scorpion from Barbary, accompanying a paper read by Richard Waller to the Royal Society on 27 March 1689. The scorpion is shown in full in watercolour at fig. 1, its eyes on the back at fig. 2, and its tail at fig. 3. This was not printed in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society.
    Object history
    27 March 1689, 'the Description and Figure of a Scorpion of Barbary was read, and shewn by Mr Waller, wherein was observable the Eyes on the middle of the back, and the taile which was without any hole, slitt or perforation thro' which the poyson might pass' (JBO/8/253).

    10 April 1689, ‘I went to Lond: was at the R. Society, where the very ingenious Mr. Waler brought in his Tables of knowing plants by a peculiar method: There was an extraordinary greatec scorpion, sent the Society out of Africa, whose Eyes were in his back, like to spiders, but not so prominent.’ (The Diary of John Evelyn: Now First Printed in Full from the Manuscripts Belonging to Mr. John Evelyn, ed. by E. S. de Beer, 6 vols (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1955), IV, 632.)
    Related fellows
    Richard Waller (1660 - 1715, British) , Naturalist
    Associated place
    <The World>
       > Africa
          > Algeria
    <The World>
       > Africa
          > Morocco
    <The World>
       > Africa
          > Tunisia
    <The World>
       > Africa
          > Libya
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