JF Ptak Science Books LLC Post 657
In the always summery days of summer of 1912 , Mr. F. Aumaury Talbot went hunting in the wilds of Nigeria–not horribly unusual of course, except that the man was shooting flowers from trees.
I’ve never seen a picture like this, nor have I read anything about shotgunning blossoms from on-high in a tree canopy. And that’s what the man is doing–right down to the shotgun. Mr. Talbot (for whom an estimable cash prize for academic work in anthropology is still named) was able to collect eighty (!) new species of flowers on this trip to Nigeria, many collected in this fashion.
We read in the story about this image (from The Illustrated London News of 8 June 1912) that in the 2 June issue appeared another shotgunning-in-the-service-of-Understanding-Nature: this time shooting butterflies. With a shotgun.
