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John (bird whisperer)
theenormity: Amazonian insects, collected from expeditions between 1849-1859 by Henry Walter Bates. Bates had travelled to the Amazon with Alfred Russell Wallace, who, inspired by the sheer diversity of species encountered both there and later in South East Asia, had conceived of the notion of evolution by natural selection, independently of... - http://dendroica.tumblr.com/post...
theenormity:
 
Amazonian insects, collected from expeditions between 1849-1859 by Henry Walter Bates. Bates had travelled to the Amazon with Alfred Russell Wallace, who, inspired by the sheer diversity of species encountered both there and later in South East Asia, had conceived of the notion of evolution by natural selection, independently of Darwin. He is a bit of an unsung hero of our attempt to understand life.
 
Bates himself ended up collecting, annotating and sending back to England 14,000 species of insects. Many were exquisitely drawn, as the images show. The drawings achieve something photgraphs don’t seem to be able to.
 
The source is a fantastic book from the Natural History Museum in London:
 
Voyages of Discovery, by Tony Rice.
 
http://www.nhm.ac.uk/business-centre/publishing/books/art-and-history/voyages-of-discovery-pb/index.html