Arcana Entomologica

Saturday, October 6, 2007

Arcana Entomologica

big beetle


close up beetle


large winged insect a


beetles and plant


butterflies and flower


butterflies and plant b


colourful beetles


cicada


five beetles and flower


flying beetle


flying beetles and plant a


flying beetles and plant


flying insects and plant a


large beetle


flying insects and plant


four beetles and plant


four more beetles and plant


large winged insect and plant


stink bugs


two butterflies


winged grasshopper


winged stick insect


beetle


beetles and flower


large insect


Although John Obadiah Westwood (1805-1893) completed a law degree, he pursued a very successful career based around his interests in entomology and archaeology.

He was a prolific scientific author and a respected illustrator, well known both for his detailed insect drawings and for his reproductions of Anglo-Saxon and Medieval manuscript illuminations.

Westwood helped found the Entomological Society and was an active member of the Linnean Society where he encounted Charles Darwin. Although he never subscribed to the Theory of Evolution because of his devout Christian beliefs, Westwood nonetheless retained great respect for Darwin's scientific acumen.

In the wealthy Frederick Hope, Westwood had an enthusiastic patron whose vast insect collection Westwood catalogued and eventually curated after it was donated to Oxford University. He also became the first Hope Professor of Zoology at Oxford, a position he held for more than thirty years.

'Arcana Entomologica; or, Illustrations of Rare, and Interesting Exotic Insects' (1841-1845) included 96 coloured plates. Westwood was able to obtain specimens from the far flung colonies as well as from Societies and private collections in England. He described the behaviour and habitats of the specimens and the illustrations attempted to display the insects in a natural state with plants from their normal environment.

The images above have all been at least slightly cropped and occasionally background cleaned, and the close-ups are spliced screencaps from the zoomify interface.

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