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Cover Legend: Testudo radiata, Plate 8, from Sowerby, Lear, Gray, "Tortoises, Terrapins and Turtles," Henry Sotheran, Joseph Baer and Co., London, 1872. The cast of characters who created this rare folio of 60 hand-colored lithographs constitutes a Who's Who of 19th century British science. James de Carle Sowerby (1787-1871), mineralogist, secretary of the Royal Botanic Society, a friend of Michael Faraday, and student of Humphrey Davy, created 40 uncolored drawings for a series of monographs about the Testudinata, published 1836-1842 by Thomas Bell, president and chair of the Linnaean Society of Britain. When Bell's venture failed, holdings of his company were purchased at an auction, and the new publishers carried on the unfinished work. Additional plates and text were commissioned. Edward Lear (1812-1888) turned Sowerby's drawings and 20 fresh illustrations into hand-colored lithographs. John Edward Gray (1800-1875), botanist and keeper of the zoological collection of the British Museum for more than 35 years, and a prolific writer with 1162 entries about scientific and social issues, added texts. Of this group of scientists, the most surprising is Edward Lear. His specialty was parrots, and although an unofficial artist-in-residence at the London Zoo, he published a widely acclaimed monograph, Illustrations of the Family of Psittacidae, or Parrots in 1832. He also produced 68 plates and many of the foregrounds for John Gould's famous Birds of Europe from 1832 to 1837. Despite his expertise as scientist, lithographer, and landscape artist, Lear is best known as the man who popularized the limerick and as the author of a series of books of nonsense rhymes for children, most notably, "The Owl and the Pussycat." Lear's remarkable skill as artist and lithographer is exemplified in the vividly colored, highly striated shell of the Madagascar Tortoise on the cover. Image courtesy of the MBL/WHOI Library (www.mblwhoilibrary.org), Woods Hole, MA, USA. Text by Ann Weissmann, exhibit curator.

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