Art Gallery - D'Orbigny

American Flying Squirrel Hand-coloured copper plate engraving of the American Flying Squirrel (Sciuropterus americanus) from Dictionnaire Universel d'Histoire Naturelle by Charles Dessalines D'Orbigny (1806-876), Publ. 1873, Paris, France The 'Dictionnaire Universel..' is large  multi-volume work, of which Wood states "The plates in this remarkable work render it the best illustrated encyclopedia of natural history". The three plate volumes contain a total of 288 steel-engraved plates, of which most are hand-colored. There is no accompanying text. The plates were engraved by a team of artists after original illustrations by, amongst others, Traviès, Prêtre, Oudart and Werner. Charles D'Orbigny published other works of Geology, Botany and Zoology. He was born into a family of naturalists and explorers, most noted amongst which is his elder brother Alcide (1802-57) who was a noted zoologist and paleontologist.