Platypus : 無料・フリー素材/写真
Platypus / Giles Watson's poetry and prose
| ライセンス | クリエイティブ・コモンズ 表示-継承 2.1 |
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| 説明 | Picture: The Naturalist’s Miscellany, written by George Shaw and illustrated by Frederick Polydore Nodder, published in twenty-two volumes between 1789 and 1813.PLATYPUSLess probable than Piltdown,Pieces of the PlatypusWere painted disbelievinglyFrom dorsal and ventral perspectives.Surely it is stuck or stitchedTogether, a duck’s billOn the body of a quadrupedWith beaver’s fur and tail,And its habits, half mole,Half otter, a madman’s dream?The poison spur ridiculous,Temerity attacking truth,A faker’s joke, makingThis composite monster.“A degree of scepticism,” wroteThe Naturalist, “is not only pardonableBut laudable.” But he had testedThe corpse by macerationIn water, found no flaw.He didn’t knowThe beast lays eggs.Source material: NM, Volume 10. The earliest encounter between a white man and a platypus appears to have occurred in 1797, when Captain John Hunter observed an aboriginal spear one in Yarramundi Lagoon, near the Hawkesbury River, just north of Sydney. Hunter himself was a keen naturalist and a fellow of the Royal Society, and he supplied many specimens and illustrations to English naturalists. In 1798, he sent his sketch, accompanied by a skin, to the Literary and Philosophical Society in Newcastle-on-Tyne. From here, they fell into Shaw’s hands, and he published his description of Platypus anatinus (flatfoot duck) in 1799. He rightly classified the creature as a mammal, but his description invited the incredulity of other scientists. The Edinburgh anatomist Robert Knox (now better known to us as the man who paid for the human cadavers acquired by the murderers Burke and Hare) wrote in 1823: “It is well known that the specimens of this extraordinary animal first brought to Europe were considered by many as impositions. They reached England by vessels which had navigated the Indian seas, a circumstance in itself sufficient to rouse the suspicions of the scientific naturalist, aware of the monstrous impostures which the artful Chinese had so frequently practised on European adventurers; in short, the scientific felt inclined to class this rare production of nature with eastern mermaids and other works of art; but these conjectures were immediately dispelled by an appeal to anatomy.” See Brian K. Hall, ‘The Paradoxical Platypus’, in BioScience, March 1999.For further details about these poems and images, see the New Holland Miscellany set on my photostream. |
| 撮影日 | 2009-04-07 16:14:17 |
| 撮影者 | Giles Watson's poetry and prose , Oxfordshire, England |
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