An illustration of a Cicada who has just emerged from its pupa and a detailed diagram explaining each step of the process from the 1919 edition of the Annual report of the Board of Regents of the Smithsonian Institution.
Full text available here.
It’s the dead of winter, so here are some flowers to warm your day! But these aren’t just any flowers—these are caterpillar food. That’s according to their illustrator, Maria Sibylla Merian. These lovely blooms can be found in her book Der Raupen wunderbare Verwandlung und sonderbare Blumennahrung – The Caterpillars’ Marvelous Transformation and Strange Floral Food. (this edition is from 1730 and has the title “De Europischen insecten” and can be found in @biodivlibrary)
Maria Sibylla Merian (1647-1717) was a German-born naturalist and scientific illustrator who is considered the mother of entomology thanks to her close observation and documentation of the life cycle of insects.
Summer pro: fresh, in season vegetables!
Summer con: fresh, in season insects!
Although, we think this stylish woodblock rendering by artist Mori Shunkei in Chūka senzen make these guys a lot more tolerable.
See more lovely books in our collection Japanese Illustrated Books from the Edo and Meiji Periods.
Come see works from our natural history rare book collection in the National Museum of Natural History. We’re celebrating the most diverse group of animals, insects, in our newest exhibition, Dazzling Diversity. It will be open through October 2018. Can’t make it? All of the books featured have been digitized and made available online in the @biodivlibrary Dazzling Diversity collection, with illustrations from each in this Flickr collection.
The animated ones above are from Papillons d’Europe, peints d’après nature, t.1 [Atlas] by J.J. Ernst.
Turning to one of our favorites for Iris Day!
This image is from Maria Sibylla Merian’s De Europischen insecten (1730), and is one of many beautiful images of hers. Find more in @biodivlibrary by searching Maria Sibylla Merian.
The New York Time recently wrote about one of our faves, Maria Sibylla Merian (1647-1717), the pioneering century naturalist and scientific illustrator.
So I thought I’d share some images from Merian’s De Europischen Insecten (1730) and let everyone know that @biodivlibrary has made her works available for anyone, including copies from the Smithsonian Libraries. The article focuses on Metamorphosis Insectorum Surinamensium ([1705]) in particular, and is not to be missed.
Insects
can
be
beautiful
too!
Just look at that long, graceful neck!
Aid to the identification of insects, t1 edited by Charles Owen Waterhouse. (1880-90), The series iis in our Joseph F. Cullman 3rd Library of Natural History, though you can see the digital copy in the Biodiversity Heritage Library by clicking on the title.
Let’s hear it for the bees! Or should we say Hymenoptera? That’s the order depicted here by illustrator Mary Wellman in the 1905 book American Insects by Vernon L. Kellogg. Find it in the Biodiversity Heritage Library, alongside thousands of other digitized biodiversity literature from across the globe.
Hymenoptera include saw-flies, gall-flies, ichneumons, wasps, bees, and ants, many of which are clearly some very important pollinators. It’s National Pollinator Week from June 20-26, 2016.
They’re coming…
As soil temperatures 8 inches under the ground reach a balmy 64°F, periodical cicadas will begin to emerge. The strange bit is that they tend to do it in groups–whole regions containing billions of cicadas are synchronized in 17 or 13 year cycles. This year, Brood V will emerge in Ohio, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Virginia, and Maryland, much to the West of Washington, D.C. Find more from the Encyclopedia of Life.
Image from Insects, their ways and means of living, by Robert E. Snodgrass (1930), which is volume 5 of the Smithsonian Scientific Series, found in the Biodiversity Heritage Library.