Illustrations from 'Erpétologie Générale, ou,
Histoire Naturelle Complète des Reptiles'
by AMC Duméril & G Bibron, 1854.
Histoire Naturelle Complète des Reptiles'
by AMC Duméril & G Bibron, 1854.
The multi-volume series, 'Erpétologie Générale, ou, Histoire Naturelle Complète des Reptiles', was released over a twenty year period beginning in 1834. The final volume is an atlas with more than one hundred steel engravings that were (I presume) hand-coloured.
'Erpétologie Générale' is owned by the Smithsonian Institution and is made available online through the Biodiversity Heritage Library and the Internet Archive (the plates featured above were downloaded from the latter source).
[via the Biodiversity Heritage Library blog Book of the Week from earlier this year]
These are wonderful! Reminds me that we don't have to speculate about extraterrestrial life forms when we have such amazing variety right here!
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