I guess combing the internet for digitized public domain scientific literature with lovely illustrations is my new hobby. But look what I found! The Biodiversity Heritage Library is:
a consortium of natural history and botanical libraries that cooperate to digitize and make accessible the legacy literature of biodiversity held in their collections and to make that literature available for open access and responsible use as a part of a global “biodiversity commons.”
So much stuff here! Easier to navigate than Botanicus.org, too (and I think everything there is also part of the collection here). They have a Flickr photostream where they’ve already pulled thousands of images out of the texts for you, and you can download individual pictures instead of the whole book. I must warn you that you can easily spend hours on there. Proceed with caution! Did everyone already know about this and not tell me?
I might need these fish for Abe’s nursery:
Or maybe this beaver for Milo and Gus’ room:
Maybe you want some fox hunting illustrations? Yeah, I think you probably do, because these are awesome.
Cows?
Eggs?
bat?
I could go on FOREVER! But you get the idea. I have big plans for a gallery wall in my dining room, and this sites figures very prominently in said plans.
I like the one where the guy falls off the horse.
right? that’s what he gets for trying to kill those poor foxes!
Oh, how I love all these old pictures…! Thanks for showing all the sources.
I just fall madly in love with the old books, especially the dutch and german ones from your last post (In understand these languages and german’s my mother tongue) and I love the old written languages. It’s sometimes so different from what we write today but you can still understand and it really puts you in another, ancient, time.
Love, Midsommarflicka
The bat and mushrooms are my favorite. Mr. Bat just looks like he’s about to break into a musical routine about how hard a bat’s life is.
Ha!
I really like the fox-hunting pictures. I love the way you decorate your house. It would be such a fun place to live and learn in. You have great taste.
Thanks, Kenz! 🙂
Oh wow! I love those fish! They’d be cool in an old bathroom too. I need to go pin this source!
I love that fish print! The colors are amazing in it! I’m lovin the cow one too, I’m a country girl at heart!
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OHHH the fox hunting prints are out of this world! I want them!!
You can have them! A whole book of them 🙂
Oh my goodness that sounds so much more accessible. This is going to be awesome for our art classes. Yes you definitely have a calling here 🙂 I have loved all the resources you have found so far. I should start compiling them so I don’t forget. These are some you can go back to over and over. Thank you!!!
I’m so in love with that site–glad it will be helpful for you, too 🙂
These would look so great in your dining room! Can’t wait to see what you do.
Sarah
thanks!
Hi! Such a great site! I found your blog while researching ‘chalk paint’ and decided to follow! Hope you’ll feel inlcined to stop by and visit me at the Little Shack on the Hill!
Thanks so much! I get lots of page views from people searching for “chalk paint,” but my original chalk paint post is so unexciting I don’t think many of them stick around :). I would have painted something more fun if I’d realized how google-able that post was going to be!