Australian Insects antique print. Scolopendra, Spider, Crab, Caterpillar c1789

by Stone, Sarah

"The Insects received from New Holland" antique print.

Enthusiastic collector and recorder of Australia's unusual wildlife, John White collectively called this group "insects". the large Scolopendra, or Centiped (Scolopendra Morsitans Lin.), A Smaller Spider, A small species of Crab, or Cancer (Cancri brachyuri in the Linnaean division of the genus), and a Caterpillar, "beset with branchy prickles, and consequently belonging to some species of Papilio or butterfly".

Rare original copperplate engraving for the Surgeon-General of the First Fleet and Settlement in Australia, John White's Journal of a Voyage to New South Wales published in London by J. Debrett in 1789-1790. As well as being Surgeon-General of the British settlement at Port Jackson, White was an avid amateur naturalist who sent a collection of natural history specimens to England in mid-1789. Sarah Stone drew forty-nine of the sixty-five specimens. Sarah Stone engraved many of them. Five English nature artists, Frederick Nodder, Charles Catton Jr., Edward Kennion, Mortimer, engraved the remainder.