Louis Pasteur checking the results of his experimental vaccine. Illustration by Peter Jackson

6 July is the anniversary of the successful testing by Louis Pasteur of a vaccine against rabies. In 1885, Pasteur treated a 9-year-old boy named Joseph Meister after he had been mauled by a rabid dog. The boy did not contract rabies.

Pasteur’s programme of innoculation had first attracted attention when he used vaccines to stop cholera and anthrax amongst farm animals in the 1870s. His invention of a method to stop milk and wine causing illness is still known today as pasteurisation.

Many more pictures relating to Louis Pasteur can be found here. A far broader range of pictures relating to medicine can be found at the Look and Learn picture library, as can many more illustrations by artist Peter Jackson.

The Great Auk, now extinct

3 July marks the anniversary of the sad demise of the Great Auk. The flightless bird of the genus Pinguinus foraged and bred on isolated, rocky islands around the North Atlantic but the popularity of its down reduced its population dramatically. Its growing rarity meant heightened interest amongst collectors for its eggs and skins and the last breeding pair were killed in 1844 on Eldey, Iceland.

More pictures of the Great Auk can be found here. A great many more pictures of wildlife (some close to extinction) can be found at the Look and Learn picture library.

Charles Darwin on the Galapagos Islands. Illustration by Andrew Howat

On 18 June 1858, Charles Darwin received the manuscript of an article by fellow naturalist Arthur Russel Wallace. Wallace had formulated similar ideas to Darwin’s on natural selection and wanted Darwin to pass his article on to Darwin’s friend, Sir Charles Lyell. Lyell and botanist Joseph Dalton Hooker read Wallace’s article and some of Darwin’s unpublished writings at a scientific meeting of the Linnean Society.

Darwin presented his theories in more detail in his book On the Origin of Species the following year.

More pictures relating to Charles Darwin and evolution can be found here. A great many illustrations featuring wildlife in all its varieties can be found at the following link.

The Montgolfier brothers, illustrated by Severino Baraldi

4 June is the anniversary of the first public balloon ascent by the Montgolfier brothers., Joseph-Michel and Jacques-Etienne. In 1783 they gave a public demonstration at Annonay before a group of dignitaries, flying for 10 minutes during which itme they covered a distance of just over a mile.

The Montgolfier brothers’ balloon, illustrated by Wilf Hardy

To celebrate their success, Etienne designed a balloon of sky blue, decorated with golden symbols, as can be seen in the picture above. The first aeronauts to ascend in the balloon were a sheep called Montauciel, a duck and a rooster, whose two-mile flight was performed before King Louis XVI and Queen Marie Antoinette.

More pictures of the Montgolfier brothers and their historic flight can be found here; for more on balloon aviation follow this link.

James Clark Ross in the Antarctic, artwork by Graham Coton

1 June marks the anniversary of James Clark Ross‘s arrival at the North Magnetic Pole during his expedition in 1831. Ross subsequently led expeditions to the Antarctic and can be seen in the above picture planting the Union Jack on the ice shelf.

The Look and Learn picture library has many more images of icy exploration at both the North Pole and South Pole and of some of the creatures explorers encountered, from polar bears to penguins.

Canadian explorer Vilhjalmar Stefansson being attacked by a polar bear

Artwork by James E. McConnell.

The theme of September’s kids art competition is “Gorilla“. The closing date for entries is 7 October 2009.

Anthropomorphism is, of course, one of the staples of nursery art. Here is a rather nice example which we have recently incorporated into the material regarding our children’s art gallery. Incidentally, the Look and Learn children’s art gallery is growing apace, with some 250 pictures added in the last week.

Today we are announcing the winners of the December 2007 children’s art competition on the theme of “Lion”. While there are some magnificent lions in the Look and Learn picture library – for instance this picture by G W Backhouse – generally, we think, the children’s art compares surprisingly well. To see the winning children’s pictures, click here.

It is not clear who nowadays would want an illustration of yaks, but I doubt whether there are many finer illustrations extant of these wonderful beasts of burden. The artist is sadly unknown.

In Europe, we call it the elk, in North America it is the moose, but either way it is the largest living member of the deer family. Sometimes growing to a height of seven feet, and maybe weighing more than 1,000 lb., the male, or bull, moose has a set of antlers which is second to none. The antlers are curious in that they branch out from the side of the head, and grow sideways rather than forwards. They do not reach full size until the moose is eight or nine years old; then they may be as much as five feet across from tip to tip. Each January the adult moose sheds its antlers, and the new pair are not fully grown until August.

Other points which make the moose easy to recognize are its long and thin-looking legs, a strange pouch of skin, called the “bell,” which hangs from the throat, and a drooping muzzle which gives the moose the appearance of having a very Roman nose. The female (cow) moose in winter has a lighter-coloured coat than the bull, whose long, coarse hair varies in shade from dark brown to a dirty grey. The coats of both the bull and the cow are finer during the summer months.

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