Butterflies and Beetles

[frontpiece detail]

Dutch amateur naturalist Pieter Cramer had an extensive natural history collection. He arranged for Gerrit Wartenaar Lambertz to prepare drawings of his specimens and also other lepidoptera collections in Holland.

Cramer wrote descriptions of each species for a serial publication released between 1779 and 1782. This was the first book on exotic lepidoptera to include the Linnaean binomial nomenclature system and therefore remains an important historical text in the field of entomology. Cramer died in 1779 and the work was completed by Caspar Stoll.

'De Uitlandsche Kapellen' {'Papillons Exotique'} is online among the Monographs Collection at Herzogin Anna Amalia Bibliothek - at least, all the original plates (must be 200 or more) are available sans text. Click on 'Vorschau' to get the page thumbnails (a large load). The images are much larger when saved than they appear on the screen. [nb. there is another volume]

Update: another version at the University of Heidelberg.







To commemorate the centenary since the publication of GG Jacobson's 'The Beetles of Russia and Western Europe' last year, the Coleoptera Department at the St Petersurg Russian Academy of Science posted all 83 colour plates from the book online [direct to thumbnail page] They have enormous images available for download if you so desire. Although I've only had a cursory look, the whole Coleoptera site (in english) is exemplary. [Parent site]