Natural Curiousities

256 Pages·2011·51.431 MB·English

by  Parkstone Press

NNaattuurraall
CCuurriioossiittiieess
Author: Alfred Russel Wallace
Layout:
Baseline Co. Ltd
61A-63A Vo Van Tan Street
4thFloor
District 3, Ho Chi Minh City
Vietnam
© Confidential Concepts, worldwide, USA
© Parkstone International, New York, USA
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced
or adapted without the permission of the copyright holder,
throughout the world. Unless otherwise specified, copyrights on the
works reproduced lie with the respective photographers, artists,
heirs or estates. Despite intensive research it has not always been
possible to establish copyright ownership. Where this is the case we
would appreciate notification.
ISBN: 978-1-78042-231-2
2
“Nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished.”
— Lao Tzu
3

The View
Jan Brueghel (Velvet Brueghel) and
Peter Paul Rubens,1617.
Oil on canvas,64.7 cm x 109.5 cm.
Museo del Prado,Madrid.
5
The curiosity cabinet of the
Dimpfel family of wholesale
ironmongers and miners
from Regensburg
Joseph Arnold,1668.
Opaque pigment with
heightening in gold on
parchment.Ulmer
Museum,Ulm.
6

AAllffrreedd RRuusssseell WWaallllaaccee
OOnn tthhee LLaaww WWhhiicchh HHaass RReegguullaatteedd tthhee IInnttrroodduuccttiioonn ooff
NNeeww SSppeecciieess ((SS2200:: 11885555))
Every naturalist who has directed his attention to the
subject of the geographical distribution of animals
and plants, must have been interested in the singular facts
which it presents. Many of these facts are quite different
from what would have been anticipated, and have hitherto
been considered as highly curious, but quite inexplicable.
Emperor Rudolf II as Vertumnus (detail)
Giuseppe Arcimboldo,1590.
Oil on wood,70.5 x 57.5 cm.
Skokloster Castle,Balsta,Sweden.
8
9
None of the explanations attempted from the time of
Linnæus are now considered at all satisfactory; none of
them have given a cause sufficient to account for the
facts known at the time, or comprehensive enough to
include all the new facts which have since been, and
are daily being added. Of late years, however, a great
light has been thrown upon the subject by geological
investigations, which have shown that the present
state of the earth, and the organisms now inhabiting it,
Solanum melongena
Aubergine (Solanées)
Plate from Basilius Besler’s Herbarium (Hortus Eystettensis), 1613.
10