All posts tagged with haeckel

Have you ever wanted to browse the stacks of a rare book library? To explore the pages of Gessner’s sixteenth century masterpiece Historiae Animalium and ask an expert why a walrus is illustrated with wing-like appendages? Or study Alexander Wilson’s passenger pigeon illustration and learn from a rare book authority the scientific implications of the depictions of now-extinct species?

By this point, if you’ve been following our “Books of the Week” regularly, you know that 18th, 19th, and 20th century taxonomic works weren’t just about the nomenclature they presented, but also the stunning illustrations accompanying these species descriptions. Those books with the most colorful, the most visually dynamic, images are those that we tend to gravitate towards for our posts. So, when we came across a book that has been described as “bridging the gap between science and art,” we simply had to feature it.