Credit: ©The Royal Society
    Image number: RS.18357

    ‘The faceated couroucou’

    Date
    1790
    Creator
    Peter Mazell (1721, Irish) , Engraver
    Object type
    Material
    Technique
    Dimensions
    height (page): 185mm
    width (page): 245mm
    height (print): 155mm
    width (print): 195mm
    Subject
    Content object
    nature
       > animal
          > bird
    Description
    Ornithological study of a Malabar trogon, Harpactes fasciatus, referred to here as the Trogon fasciatus . It appears to be dead, lying on top of a tree stump. Its lower body is maroon, and its head and neck a deep blue colour, the two separated by a white band.

    Inscribed below: ‘P Mazell Sculp. THE FACEATED COUROUCOU’

    Written in the associated description: ‘The back is tawny; the coverts of the tail grey; the coverts of the wings and the scapulars, elegantly barred with narrow undulated lines of black and white; the quil-feathers dusky, striped with white on their outward webs.’

    Plate 4 from Thomas Pennant’s Indian Zoology (London, 1790), printed by Henry Hughs for Robert Faulder.

    Thomas Pennant (1726–1798), British naturalist, traveller, and writer, was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1767. Best known for his published accounts of tours throughout the British Isles. He never travelled outside of Europe and his account of Indian Zoology was gleamed from drawings brought back by Joan Gideon Loten (1710-1789), a servant in the colonies of the Dutch East India Company and 29th Governor of Sri Lanka, then Ceylon.
    Related fellows
    Thomas Pennant (1726 - 1798, Welsh) , Naturalist
    Joan Gideon Loten (1710 - 1789) , Colonial administrator
    Associated place
    <The World>
       > Asia
          > Sri Lanka
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