Notebook Erebus and Terror in Antartica

These animals of the far South were painted by Walter Hood Fitch (1817–1892), illustrator and creator of more than 10,000 lithographs, for the botanist and naturalist Joseph Dalton Hooker (1817–1911). Serving as assistant surgeon during the adventurous three-year expedition led by polar explorer James Clark Ross aboard the reinforced Royal Navy bomb vessels Erebus and Terror, Hooker began publishing in 1843 four botanical monographs and one zoological volume. Together they catalogued over 3,000 species from New Zealand, Tasmania, and Antarctica, illustrated with 530 color plates by Fitch. Praised by Charles Darwin, this monumental achievement is regarded as a pioneering work of biogeography