Another flower illustration colored by hand from my 1830 copy of ‘Transactions of the Horticultural Society of London’, this one for the essay, "An Account and Description of the Species and most remarkable Varieties of Spring Crocuses" by Joseph Sabine FRS.
🌱 🌷

“..for the boundary of light and darkness cuts the Equator and all its parallels equally, or in halves."

Only five days until the vernal equinox. Plate from my 1794 ninth edition of ‘Astronomy Explained Upon Sir Isaac Newton's
Principles’ by Scottish astronomer James Ferguson. 🌞

Now the owl is really out: an illustration from an 18th century, German children's encyclopedia.
The engraving on laid paper was completely colored by hand.
Coin for scale. 🪶 🦉

A flower illustration colored by hand for the essay, “An Account of the Species of Calochortus [aka fairy lantern]; a Genus of American plants" by David Douglas, who also first described his namesake conifer.
Published in my 1830 copy of ‘Transactions of the Horticultural Society of London’
#sciart

“This [may] possibly explain how a medusa, when killed by being overwhelmed by a sudden incursion of muddy sediment into the water..might retain its shape..”

Cast made by Charles Walcott to understand how soft body animals fossilize from my copy of his 1898 monograph, Fossil Medusae.”
#FossilFriday

For #SciArtSeptember day 29 a plate from the second volume (1754) of Herbarium Blackwellianum Emendatum et Auctum by botanist Christoph Jacob Trew, a German edition of Scottish botanical artist & engraver Elizabeth Blackwell’s A Curious Herbal.
Coin for scale.

Another post for #SciArtSeptember day 29: Plate 96 from Kunstformen der Natur (1904) by Ernst Haeckel depicting a variety of marine annelid worm species. It is labeled Chaetopoda, an obsolete taxonomical term. A favorite, it looks even more striking in person.
Coin for scale.

Another post for #SciArtSeptember day 30, a plate from Kunstformen der Natur (1904) by Ernst Haeckel labeled “Bryozoa”, a variety of marine and freshwater (or both) aquatic invertebrate animals. In this case, the species are part of the Gymnolaemata class of marine bryozoans.
Coin for scale.

I went trout fishing late summer (catch and release of course), and along the banks of the creek were stands of goldenrod mixed with the most pungent native mint you can imagine. Goldenrod has a bad rap.
Of course I paused to take some photos.

‘Head of Minerva’ was an oil on canvas study by Elihu Vedder for his Library of Congress mosaic in Washington D.C. It shows Minerva as patroness and protector of art, learning and industry.

Forgot happy bats.

Plate from my copy of American Natural History by early American naturalist John Godman, published in Philadelphia in 1826.

Woodblock printing. Alexander Rider is the bat artist, but the book also has illustrations by French naturalist and artist Charles Alexandre Lesueur who starting in 1816 spent 21 years in the United States illustrating and publishing natural history papers.

I was outdoors most of the day. In addition to blue ribbon trout fishing I visited limestone cliffs first deposited 350 million years ago in a shallow sea that were later uplifted 65 million years ago during the Laramide Orogeny when the Rocky Mountains were formed. Geology rocks, pun intended.

Blue flag iris (Iris versicolor)

Chromolithograph from my copy of The Native Flowers and Ferns of the United States by Thomas Meehan, published by Louis Prang & Co. in 1878.
Coin for scale.

An interesting title published in 1650 in my personal library by Henry Hobart (1560-1625), who succeeded Edward Coke as Chief Justice of the Court of Common Pleas. Interesting to me because of the typeface used inside and it’s rebound cover (1/3)

‘Flora attired by the Elements’

The frontispiece to my 1791 first edition copy of “The botanic garden. A poem in two parts” by Erasmus Darwin, a key member of the West Midlands Enlightenment, but probably more well known as the grandfather of naturalist Charles Darwin.
#booksky

A copperplate engraving of different models of the universe including the Ptolemaic model, Copernicus's heliocentric model, Tycho Brahe’s geoheliocentric, and Descartes Système des Tourbillons. From my copy of a 1761 French textbook by Lenglet Du Fresnoy.
📚💙 #HistSci

While he was at a school for sculptors set up by Lorenzo de' Medici in Florence Michelangelo carved his first true works in stone. This is one of them, a relief known as the Madonna of the Stairs.
He was around 15 years old at the time.

“TO THE STUDENTS OF MEDICINE,
IN THE UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA;
AND TO THE LOVERS AND CULTIVATORS OF NATURAL HISTORY,
IN EVERY PART OF THE UNITED-STATES,
THESE ELEMENTS OF BOTANY ARE VERY RESPECTFULLY INSCRIBED BY BENJAMIN SMITH BARTON.
Philadelphia, February 28th, 1803.”
@botsocamerica.bsky.social

I don’t think the subject of beautiful scientific art is just biological.
A plate still bound inside my 1794 copy of “Astronomy Explained Upon Sir Isaac Newton's Principles” by Scottish astronomer James Ferguson, a book that helped simplify Newtonian mechanics for a general audience #Sciart
📚💙 🔭

“Three things bear mighty Sway with Men,
The Sword, the Scepter, and the PEN”

Page from my copy of The Universal Penman by writing master and engraver George Bickham the Elder (1684–1758). It was a writing guide with a multitude of styles that presumably led to carpal tunnel syndrome.

An engraved plate from Florilegium renovatum et Auctum (1641) by Swiss-born engraver Matthäus Merian the Elder (1593 – 1650). The added lepidoptera species is apropos: his daughter was entomologist & scientific artist Maria Sibylla Merian.
Coin for scale.
#sciart #histsci

Crinoids, aka sea lilies, look like lilies in this plate from Kunstformen der Natur (1904) by Haeckel, but they are in reality echinoderms, animals with five-pointed radial symmetry seen in the stem ossicle cross sections that look like stars.
Coin for scale.
🦑 🐡

Since I had it out, how about a ringtail (Bassariscus astutus) from the same volume showing off its namesake tail. The coloring all done by hand.
Coin for scale (and anti-AI plagiarism).

A plate from the second volume (1754) of Herbarium Blackwellianum Emendatum et Auctum by botanist Christoph Jacob Trew, a German edition of Scottish botanical artist & engraver Elizabeth Blackwell’s A Curious Herbal.
Coin for scale.
#sciart

An engraved plate from my 1827 copy of Elements of Botany by Benjamin Smith Barton, one of the first professors of natural history in the U.S. & who built the largest collection of botanical specimens in the country. This was considered the first U.S. botany textbook. 🌱 🐡 📚💙

Kepler’s depiction of a small stellated dodecahedron in his book Harmonices Mundi Libri V published in 1619. The page also includes the Platonic solids, some with faces assigned to classical elements and the cosmos. This is also the book that introduced his third law of planetary motion.
📚💙 🔭

A plate from Kunstformen der Natur by Ernst Haeckel depicting Acantharea species and their strontium sulfate skeletons. They look huge here, but in reality are tiny marine microplankton ranging from 0.2 to a couple of millimeters in diameter.
Coin for scale.
🦑 🐡

“Todier Sylvain -
Todus Sylvia”

A hand colored illustration of a tody-flycatcher by French bird artist Pauline Rifer de Courcelles (1781-1851).

Plate from ‘Histoire Naturelle des Tangaras, des Manakins et des Todiers’ (1805) by French zoologist A. G. Desmarest.
Coin for scale.
#sciart 🪶

The unexpected find. When it was rebound, it included this holographic manuscript poem by English poet Anna Seward (1749-1809) in her hand. Constable published her letters in 1811 and in Walter Scott’s edited version of her works this is “Written in the Blank Page of the Sorrows of Werter” 📚💙 (3/n)