Blue-winged shoveler
Date
1731
Creator
Mark Catesby (1683 - 1749, British) , Naturalist
Object type
Library reference
18894
Material
Technique
Dimensions
height (print): 355mm
width (print): 265mm
width (print): 265mm
Subject
Content object
Description
Ornithological study of a blue-winged shoveler, Spatula rhynchotis, referred to here as Anas Americanus. Shown in right profile, looking to the left [as viewed], standing on a rocky mound.
Signed and inscribed below: ‘Anas &c.’
Written in the associated description: ‘the upper part of the Wing is covered with pale blue Feathers, below which is a Row of white Feathers, and below them a Row of green; the rest of the lower part of the Wing is brown; all the other part of the Body is of a mixed brown, not unlike in colour to the common Wild Duck.’
Plate 96 from volume I of Mark Catesby’s The natural history of Carolina, Florida and the Bahama Islands (London, 1731).
Mark Catesby (1683-1749), British naturalist was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1733.
Signed and inscribed below: ‘Anas &c.’
Written in the associated description: ‘the upper part of the Wing is covered with pale blue Feathers, below which is a Row of white Feathers, and below them a Row of green; the rest of the lower part of the Wing is brown; all the other part of the Body is of a mixed brown, not unlike in colour to the common Wild Duck.’
Plate 96 from volume I of Mark Catesby’s The natural history of Carolina, Florida and the Bahama Islands (London, 1731).
Mark Catesby (1683-1749), British naturalist was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1733.
Object history
The Natural History was originally published in 10 parts, intended to be bound in 2 volumes. It was the earliest western scientific description of the flora and fauna of North America, and its copper plates were etched and hand-coloured by Catesby himself.
Catesby’s trips to North America were funded by a group of sponsors, many of whom were colonial governors, charged with managing the British Empire’s territories, and their support of Catesby’s research can be read as an exercise in colonial control. As The Natural History’s parts were issued it also became important as a reference text to naturalists attempting to order the natural world according to the ambitious taxonomic systems that characterized the mid-18th century.
Catesby’s trips to North America were funded by a group of sponsors, many of whom were colonial governors, charged with managing the British Empire’s territories, and their support of Catesby’s research can be read as an exercise in colonial control. As The Natural History’s parts were issued it also became important as a reference text to naturalists attempting to order the natural world according to the ambitious taxonomic systems that characterized the mid-18th century.
Associated place