drawing;
album
- Museum number
- SL,5275.5
- Description
-
The life cycle of a moth, with a snake, from an album of 91 drawings entitled 'Merian's Drawings of Surinam Insects &c'; with examples of pupae, chrysalis, caterpillar on a plant with star-shaped leaves
Watercolour, touched with bodycolour, with pen and black ink, heightened with white, on vellum
- Production date
- 1701-1705 (circa)
- Dimensions
-
Height: 381 millimetres
-
Width: 285 millimetres
- $Inscriptions
-
- Curator's comments
- Entry from J.Harvey's commentary to the Folio Society facsimile of the Surinam Album (London, 2006):
'This watercolour depicts the root of the cassava, Manihot esculenta (Crantz). Merian noted how the Amerindians grated the root, pressed out the juice, placed the remaining root on a hot plate and then baked it “like a rusk”. This process made the root palatable, and eliminated or at least reduced the poisonous compounds found in the root to safe levels. She noted “Should a man or an animal drink the extracted juice cold, he or it dies an extremely painful death”.
The moth, larva and pupa depicted are hawkmoths, but Merian incorrectly shows the larva and pupa of Pseudosphinx tetrio (Linnaeus) as immature stages of Manduca rustica rustica (Fabricius). This led to the long-held misassociation of this larva with Manduca rustica, and also erroneous food-plant records of rustica on Manihot. (Actually Manihot is probably also not a food-plant for P. tetrio, which feeds on Plumeria; only Merian has it on Manihot and it is probably erroneous) .
The snake is the Amazon Tree Boa or Garden Tree Boa, Corallus hortulanus (Linnaeus), its stomach is swollen indicating that it has recently eaten.'
- Location
- Not on display
- Acquisition date
- 1753
- Acquisition notes
- Transferred to P&D 11 March 1885 (see note on fly-leaf of album SL,5275.1-91). Transferred from the Department of Manuscripts.
- Department
- Prints and Drawings
- Registration number
- SL,5275.5
- Additional IDs
-
Miscellaneous number: N,01.5
