Common Echidna. Australian Spiny Anteater, egg-laying monotreme c1896.

$65.00

Australian Echidna antique print. Quills like a porcupine, beak like a bird, pouch like a kangaroo, and laying eggs like a reptile. (The other Australian monotreme is the Platypus.)

Colour-printed c1896 by Wyman & Sons Ltd for A Hand-book to the Marsupialia and Monotremata by Richard Lydekker, B.A., F.R.S., Vice-President of the Geological Society, etc., etc., as part of (Edward) Lloyd's Natural History, edited by Richard Bowdler Sharpe, L.L.D., F.L.S., &c.

Wyman & Sons coloured the steel plates engraved and published by William Home Lizars (1788-1859) c1841 for (Sir William) Jardine’s Naturalist’s Library. In the original publication each of the fine steel engraved portraits of marsupials by Lizars was highlighted by hand-colour, against an uncoloured habitat background.

Page size is 120 x 180mm (4 3/4 x 7 inches).