Credit: ©The Royal Society
    Image number: RS.21213

    Rakali

    Date
    1805
    Creator
    Wilson Lowry (1762 - 1824, British) , Engraver
    Object type
    Library reference
    9183
    Material
    Dimensions
    height (print): 128mm
    width (print): 210mm
    Subject
    Biology
       > Zoology
    Content object
    nature
       > animal
    Description
    Zoological study of a Rakali, or golden-bellied water rat, Hydromys chrysogaster (here referred to as the red-bellied Hydromis and yellow-bellied Hydromis), a rodent native to Australia and Papua New Guinea.

    The accompanying article states that: ‘This animal was killed by a sailor in one of the islands which form d’Entrecasteaux’s channel, at the moment when about to shelter itself beneath a heap of stones: it was preserved to us by the care of M. Levillain, one of the zoologists on the expedition to the austral islands.’.

    Plate 7, illustrating the paper: ‘Memoir of a new genus of mammalia called Hydromis. By E. Geoffroy. The Philosophical Magazine…[edited] by Alexander Tilloch, v.22, (1805) pp.328-334.

    Inscribed above: ‘Philo. Mag. Vol. XXII Pl.VII.’. Inscribed below: ‘A. Red bellied Hydromys’.

    Wilson Lowry (1762-1824), British engraver and geologist, was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1812.

    Étienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire (1772-1844), French naturalist.
    Associated place
    <The World>
       > Oceania
          > Australia
    <The World>
       > Oceania
          > Papua New Guinea
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