Southern flying squirrel
Date
1731
Creator
Mark Catesby (1683 - 1749, British) , Naturalist
Object type
Library reference
18894
Material
Technique
Subject
Description
Zoological study of a Southern flying squirrel, Glaucomys volans, referred to here as Sciurus volans, shown from above, as if in flight. Below is a powdery strap airplant Catopsis berteroniana specimen.
Signed and inscribed below: 'Sciurus Viscum'
Written in the associated description: 'These Squirrels are gregarious, travelling from one Tree to another in Companies of ten, or twelve together. When I first saw them, I took them for dead Leaves, blown one Way by the Wind, but was not long so deceived, when I perceived many of them to follow one another in one Direction'.
Plate 77 from volume II 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. Travelling under the auspices of the Royal Society, Catesby recorded the earliest western scientific descriptions of the flora and fauna of the ‘New World’. He was the first naturalist to use folio-sized colour plates in a natural history book, and etched the copper plates himself before hand-colouring each individual print with watercolours.
Signed and inscribed below: 'Sciurus Viscum'
Written in the associated description: 'These Squirrels are gregarious, travelling from one Tree to another in Companies of ten, or twelve together. When I first saw them, I took them for dead Leaves, blown one Way by the Wind, but was not long so deceived, when I perceived many of them to follow one another in one Direction'.
Plate 77 from volume II 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. Travelling under the auspices of the Royal Society, Catesby recorded the earliest western scientific descriptions of the flora and fauna of the ‘New World’. He was the first naturalist to use folio-sized colour plates in a natural history book, and etched the copper plates himself before hand-colouring each individual print with watercolours.
Associated place
Credit
©The Royal Society
Image number
RS.18821