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Heritage Centre :
George Edwards: The Bedell and his Birds
2 December 2005 - 22 April 2006
The Man of War Bird and the Chinese fish
Gleanings of Natural History (1764) Volume 3, plate 309
© Royal College of Physicians of London
The bird is much reduced in this plate from the size of life. The head and right foot are figured of their natural bigness. The original was a stuffed skin: from bill-point to tail-end it measured thirty-six inches…The legs and feet are of a dirty yellowish colour… The Chinese fish I have kept alive twenty months in a bason of water... The Red Sea-wrack or Weed, placed here by way of decoration, is drawn of the size of nature. It is flat, and as thin as the finest lawn; curiously dotted or granulated , and of a beautiful carmine colour’.
This page last updated on
November 22, 2005