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The 19th Century was the heyday of animal illustration. The European exploration and colonisation of the world opened up new areas to Western Science. Wherever Europeans went, be they explorers, diplomats, colonists or conquerors they took with them botanists and zoologists to record what they found. At the same time, there was a market for illustrated works depicting wildlife from all over the world. The technology of the time meant that fine illustrations could only be created by hand engraving plates, usually made from porous stone, printing onto paper, and then hand colouring the print with watercolour.

Here are some 19th century Gerbil illustrations that I have collected sorted into chronological order. In most cases, clicking on the picture will show a larger version.

A Tamarisk Gerbil (Meriones tamariscinus) from "A Genuine and Universal System of Natural History" by Sir Charles Linnaeus, completed after his death by J. Frid Gmelin and published in London in 1804. Click on it for a larger version which also shows a Dormouse, two Jerboas, a Striped Mouse and an Economic Mouse.

This Indian Gerbil (Tatera indica) is from a 1837 version of Georges Léopold Cuvier's "Le Règne Animal distribue d’Apres son organization", originally published in Paris in 1817.

A gerbil (species unknown) from Dizionario delle scienze naturalle ... an Italian 1937 translation of "Dictionnaire des sciences naturelles ..." by Georges-Frédéric Cuvier, younger brother of the better-known Georges Léopold, Baron Cuvier (see above).

This illustration of The Greater Egyptian Gerbil (Gerbillus pyramidum), also sometimes called The Pyramid Gerbil, comes from an English translation of the previous work, Baron Cuvier's "Le Règne animal distribué d'après son organisation" . This translation was published in London in 1837 as "The Animal Kingdom arranged according to its organisation". The picture is only one of three on the page. Click on the above image to see the whole print, which also includes drawings of a Common European Hamster (Cricetus cricetus), and a Root Vole (Microtus oeconomus), although different scientific names were used by Cuvier for these species.

This illustration of Burton's Gerbil (Gerbillus burtoni) is from Volume Two of "Transactions of The Zoological Society of  London" and was published in 1838 to accompany the first description of this species.

This illustration of the Bushveld Gerbil (Tatera leucogaster) appeared in "Naturwissenschaftliche Reise Nach Mossambique auf befel Seiner Majestat des Konigs Friedrich Wilhelm IV" by Wilhelm C. H. Peters. It was published in Berlin in 1852 and accompanied the first description of this species. Click on the print for a larger version that shows more the very large page this comes from, and includes a pygmy mouse. 

This illustration is of The Midday Gerbil (Meriones meridianus) is by the famous bird illustrator J G Keulemans (1842-1912) and published by the Indian Government in 1879 in "The Scientific Results of the Second Yarkand Mission: Mammalia" by William Thomas Blanford.

This print of a Shaw's Jird (Meriones shawi) by J Smith appeared in The Proceedings of the Zoological Society in 1884.

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