The Zones of the Earth. Plate No. X. Productions of the Southern Temperate Zone.

[Title from printed caption lower centre]. London : A. & S. Joseph, Myers & Co. 144 Leadenhall Street, [after 1842]. Chromolithograph, 253 x 378 mm, mounted on a fully contemporary backing sheet of marbled card, with an eyelet for hanging at top centre; some pale stains and light marks, mostly confined to the margins, otherwise very good condition; lacking the printed key.

A single chromolithograph from a pedagogical folio of ten natural history prints published in London around 1843.

‘These fifty-four different men and beasts of the southern temperate zone include a sperm whale and an orca. The “laughing” sperm whale is a recurring image in nineteenth-century general natural history prints and dates from Bonnaterre (Paris, 1789)’ (Ingalls, Elizabeth. Whaling Prints in the Francis B. Lothrop Collection, Salem : Peabody Museum, 1987, no. 426).

The print also depicts a native of New Holland (after Baudin’s voyage artist, Nicolas-Martin Petit) accompanied by a dingo; a lyrebird, kangaroo, wallaby, emu, echidna, wombat, and Xanthorrhoea (grass tree); a New Zealand Māori; and a native of Patagonia with a hunting weapon bola (and, fancifully, a Marquesan club).

A later edition of the Zones of the Earth portfolio was published by Caspar Studer in Winterthur, Switzerland, which Ingalls (ibid., no. 463) observes is a version ‘of a less refined quality overall.’ The printed key to each of the chromolithographs in the Studer edition, however, was integral to the illustration, being printed in the bottom margin.