Bidspirit auction | Linnaeus & Sibly - The

Linnaeus & Sibly - The Blue Jay of North America - This scarce first edition engraving is from Sir Charles Linnaeus & Ebenezer Sibley's A Genuine and Universal System of Natural History... or Magazine of Natural History . The work was published in London between 1794 and 1810, printed for the proprietor and sold by Champante and Whitrow. The work featured originally hand-colored engravings based upon original illustrations by celebrated natural history artists and authors including George Edwards, Marcus Elieser Bloch, Georg Wolfgang Knorr, Georges-Louis Leclerc de Buffon, and others. It followed Linnaeus's classification methods exploring animals, vegetables, minerals, humans, and other natural history subjects. Carl Linnaeus (1707-1788) was a Swedish botanist, physician and zoologist who formalized the system of binomial nomenclature which is still in practice today. He is considered the Father of Taxonomy. Ebenezer Sibly (1751-1799) was an English physician and astrologer. He also wrote works on the occult. He believed in the theory of environmentalist monogenism purporting a single human origin of which he claimed the white race was the first on earth and that climate was the cause of darker skin. Paper Size: ~ 5 1/8” by 8 3/4” Paper Type or Special Features: Originally Hand-colored Engraving