Angelfish

Zoological study of an angelfish, Pterophyllum, referred to here as Acarauna major, shown in right profile.

Signed and inscribed: 'An Acarauna &c'

Written in the associated description: 'These fish are taken on the Coasts of Carolina, but on the Coasts of the Bahama Islands are found the same shaped Fish, with both small and large Scales, deeply verged with Gold.'

Plate 31 from volume II of Mark Catesby’s The natural history of Carolina, Florida and the Bahama Islands (London, 1731).

Mark Catesby (1683-1749), British naturalist was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1733. Travelling under the auspices of the Royal Society, Catesby recorded the earliest western scientific descriptions of the flora and fauna of the ‘New World’. He was the first naturalist to use folio-sized colour plates in a natural history book, and etched the copper plates himself before hand-colouring each individual print with watercolours.