Antique Polar Bear Print with Bats and Hedgehog and Wolverine, 1890

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This antique natural history print shows a polar bear, a flying lemur, a flying fox, a pipistrelle bat, a hedgehog, … Read more This antique natural history print shows a polar bear, a flying lemur, a flying fox, a pipistrelle bat, a hedgehog, a water shrew, a mole, a wolverine and an american badger, an original plate from c. F. A. Kolb's naturgeschichte der säugethiere, published in stuttgart by hoffmann circa 1890. A large white polar bear stands at the centre of a wooded rocky landscape, while bats hang and fly above it and smaller insect eating mammals move through the ferns below. The sheet is lettered 1. Abtheilung and säugethiere 2. Blatt at the head, and every animal is numbered and named beneath the image in german fraktur with its latin name, here fliegender maki, vampyr, zwergfledermaus, gem. Igel, wasserspitzmaus, gem. Maulwurf, eisbär, vielfrass and amerik. Dachs. The polar bear, ursus maritimus, is the obvious centrepiece, but the plate is equally charming for its hedgehog, mole and badger, the kind of familiar european animals that kolb set beside exotic ones so that children could compare them. See less