Petrus Camper’s Metamorphosesfrog
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1. INTRO

2. DOMESTIC

3. EXOTIC

4. DRAWING

5. SUMMARY


Petrus Camper, "Two Lessons on the Analogy that exists between the quadrupeds, birds, and fish." (13-14 October, 1778).

Camper demonstrates in his first lesson the real analogy that exists between the quadrupeds, and, in his second lesson, how, thanks to this analogy, all animals can be drawn correctly.

Having a personal collection of skeletons, he was able to discover that all animals, even fish and birds, are like quadrupeds from comparative anatomy.

metamorphoses

Petrus Camper derived five general rules:

  1. Animals that are not low enough to the ground to scoop up their food are compensated by a long neck. Fish and snakes don't have necks because they don't need necks; they feed directly. The forequarters of animals, whose high legs require a long neck, are always lower than in other animals, i.e. sheep, deer, and camels have back spines and haunches that slant diagonally.
  2. The stomach area is much larger among herbivorous animals than among carnivores, and much, much larger among those that chew the cud than animals who aren't ruminants. Intestines do not need as large a volume to convert flesh into flesh as they do to change grass into flesh. The cow eats once to fill his belly and then chews the cud, whereas the horse eats continually. Therefore the cow has a bigger stomach than the horse; the horse than the dog, and etc.
  3. Animals are as long as they have number of vertebrae in their loins (the elephant has three, the horse 5, the cow 6, the lion, cat, and camel 7).
  4. Among animals like the elephant, horse, bull, deer, camel and all ruminants (also the pig), the feet have solid horn or clefts so that they can stand the necessary long time it takes for them to feed themselves. In all the other species, the foot ends in toes. More than 5 is never found among the quadrupeds.
  5. Among the birds, wings end in fingers too. All have a thumb, most have in addition two fingers, and several species have nails, e.g. the ostrich.

This first lesson is illustrated by Camper with five examples:
bullet Plate III, Fig. 1 horse
bullet Fig. 2 cow
bullet Plate IV, Fig. 3 dog
bullet Fig. 4 camel
bullet Plate V, Fig. 5 elephant

The second lesson:
bullet Plate V, Fig. 8 horse again
bullet Plate VI, Fig. 6 horse by Chrispyn van de Pas
bullet Plate VI, Fig. 7 cow by Chrispyn van de Pas
bullet Plate VI, Fig. 9 crane
bullet Plate VI, Fig. 10 frog
bullet Plate VI, Fig. 11 rowboat
bullet Plate VI, Fig. 11 fish
bullet Plate VII, Fig. 12 cow-crane metamorphosis
bullet Plate VII, Fig. 13 horse-human metamorphosis

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