Byline: Didi van Trijp
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The Murky Waters of Classification: Ordering Fish in Eighteenth-century Europe
By Didi van Trijp ‘Fish & Fiction‘ is an exhibition on the history of fascination with the aquatic life, between 1500-1900, and is currently on show at the University Library of Leiden University (until January 13). The coming weeks Shells and Pebbles is publishing some of the catalogue texts, composed by the historians who contributed…
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Enlightening Fish Books
When the French naturalist Bernard Germain de Lacépède died in 1825, fellow naturalist Georges Cuvier lamented this as a loss for the field of natural history. Lacépède, who authored the five-volume Histoire naturelle des poissons, ‘had a talent for finding the appealing side of the story of these organisms [fish] that seem to touch us…