. Bonn zoological bulletin. Zoology. Taxonomic history of the genus Lacerta 323 The first engraving - and printing - techniques were wood cuts (15th century), and shortly later, copper engravings. Around 1800 copper engraving was refined (etchings) and the first very expensive and rare colour prints in herpetol- ogy were based upon them (Daudin 1802; see Schmidtler 2007) after centuries of hand colouring. Lithography (the first lizards in Schmid 1819) was invented and improved more and more up to the time of chromolithography (see Fig. 8). Bewick ( 1809-1816; Fig. 7) renewed the wood cuts
. Bonn zoological bulletin. Zoology. Taxonomic history of the genus Lacerta 323 The first engraving - and printing - techniques were wood cuts (15th century), and shortly later, copper engravings. Around 1800 copper engraving was refined (etchings) and the first very expensive and rare colour prints in herpetol- ogy were based upon them (Daudin 1802; see Schmidtler 2007) after centuries of hand colouring. Lithography (the first lizards in Schmid 1819) was invented and improved more and more up to the time of chromolithography (see Fig. 8). Bewick ( 1809-1816; Fig. 7) renewed the wood cuts ("Wood engraving"). In the second half of the 19th century the first photographs appeared (see Niekisch, 2010; Fig. 9 hoc loco) and revolutionised the book-illus- tration also in natural science and herpetology together with new letterpress printing techniques. These technical advances were attended by the expansion of some zoo- logical / herpetological disciplines - or facilitated their proliferation - like ethology, husbandry, ecology. It is noteworthy to emphasize that each of the engraving- and printing techniques displays its technical, artistic and economical strengths and weaknesses as measured by the different requirements they have to satisfy (see Schmidtler, 2007). Book illustrations were always expensive and this was the most important reason why the informative val- ue of many important works had to suffer immensely. Naturalistic figures As was explained above, the lack of species recognition was especially responsible for rendering many figures use- less in representing distinctive characters. This was espe- cially the case for many of the reptiles, being regarded as abhorrent or less important (except the venomous snakes), compared to mammals or birds - up to the Linnean times and later. A good example is Gessner's fabulous creature (Fig. 1), called "Lacertus viridis", and typically attended with a po- em advertising a medical and cosmetic
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Keywords: ., bookcollectionbiodiversity, bookleafnumber22, booksubjectzoology
