Credit: ©The Royal Society
    Image number: RS.18368

    'Black bellied anhinga'

    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 an Indian darter, Anhinga melanogaster, referred to here as the same. Shown in right profile, on a grassy mound, surrounded by water.

    Inscribed below: 'P Mazell Sculp. BLACK BELLIED ANHINGA'

    Written in the associated description: 'It sits on the shrubs that hang over the water; and, in a country where every one's ideas are filled with serpents, often terrifies the passengers by shooting out its long slender neck, which, in their first surprize, they take for the darting of some fatal reptile.'

    Plate 15 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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