Small Pleasures

If there is pleasure to be had in contemplating a beetle or a bit of moss, there is a corresponding pleasure in art that records another's scrutiny of such things. I love the wonder that comes through in the simplest photograph of a bird or a flower, the knowledge that somebody came face to face with beauty and tried to hold onto it. But if nature photography, in which every successful picture likely stands on the shoulders of dozens of unsuccessful ones, is a tribute to a human being's dogged fascination with wonder, how much more so the records found in sketchbooks. In photography we might attempt to grasp at a moment; in drawing and painting, we try to bring back a moment, a sight that has passed.

In my estimation, even the most clinical of illustrations for field guides have this sort of surprise in them, an attempt to catch and hold something beyond our full control. So I was delighted, if a little bemused, today to discover that I had saved a link to an 1813 engraving in the collection of the British Library. I don't know when I saved it, or what had led me to it in the first place, but the wide-eyed wonder of the title might be explanation enough:


Spotted Kingfisher, and a singular Frog on the Coast of Malabar

Yes, yes, I know that "singular" is a scientific term, every bit as factual as the picture. But there is a note of surprise and delight in it, all the same. A frog was seen, and it was a frog like no other.