Natural history & anatomy
The Cabinet
Zoology, entomology, and anatomical plates — the study of living form.
Discomedusae
From Haeckel's Kunstformen der Natur — jellyfish, drawn like stained glass.
Asteridea
From Haeckel's Kunstformen der Natur — starfish, catalogued like jewelry.
Cubomedusae
From Haeckel's Kunstformen der Natur — box jellyfish, rendered in ghostly duotone.
Trochilidae
From Haeckel's Kunstformen der Natur — hummingbirds, the one warm-blooded plate in the set.
Chiroptera
From Haeckel's Kunstformen der Natur — bat faces, drawn with unflinching, gothic detail.
Nudibranchia
From Haeckel's Kunstformen der Natur — sea slugs, more vividly colored than any flower.
The Fourth Muscle Man
From De Humani Corporis Fabrica — the book that founded modern human anatomy.
The Wild Turkey
Plate One of The Birds of America — the bird Audubon chose to open the whole work.
The Baltimore Oriole
A mated pair and their remarkable woven nest, from The Birds of America.
The Carolina Parrot
A flock of the only parrot native to the eastern United States — extinct since 1918.
The Great-Footed Hawk
A pair of peregrine falcons over fresh kill — one of Audubon’s most violent plates.
The Mocking Bird
A nest under attack by a rattlesnake — the plate that scandalized 19th-century ornithology.
The Purple Martin
A hollow gourd birdhouse — one of the oldest bird-housing traditions in North America.
The Snow Bird
A small, unshowy plate — winter finches on a red mulberry branch.
The White-Headed Eagle
The bald eagle, drawn seventy years before it became a national symbol.
The Blue Heron
A wading bird in saturated blue, standing at the edge of its own habitat.
The Booby
A seabird named for its trusting lack of fear — with a ship on the horizon.
The Golden-Winged Woodpecker
A flicker on a chestnut oak branch, paired the way Catesby paired every specimen.
The Red Mottled Rock-Crab
Two crabs, two angles — Catesby’s Natural History steps outside the aviary.
The Timber Rattlesnake
A coiled rattlesnake, with its rattle and fang isolated for study.
Spiders, Ants, and a Hummingbird
The plate that convinced no one in Europe — until it was confirmed true.
The Bat’s Flea, with Fleabane
A single insect, paired with the plant that supposedly repelled its whole order.