Rare c.18th hand coloured engraving of the Kookaburra.
This is the first printed image of the Kookaburra which collected from Sydney and printed in London on November 12th, 1789.
The first engraving of a Kookaburra was made from a specimen given to the French naturalist Pierre Sonnerat at the Cape of Good Hope by Joseph Banks was in 1770. Banks instructed Sonnerat to deliver the specimen to fellow naturalist Dr Philibert Commerson in Mauritius. Sonnerat sailed there, giving it to Commerson’s draughtsman, Paul Philippe Sanguin de Jossigny who made a sketch of it. However, following Commerson’s premature death in 1773, Sonnerat not only kept Jossigny’s illustration but unscrupulously signed it and passing it off as his own work, and included it in his book on New Guinea, with an added a caption indicating that it came from New Guinea.
Later when the British ornithologist John Latham described Bank’s remaining specimen of the Kookaburra in 1782 in his A General Synopsis of Birds, he perpetuated Sonnerat’s error, which explains how the bird obtained its early scientific name Dacelo novaeguineae although it doesn’t occur there. Banks had caught several Kookaburras while exploring Australia’s east coast on Cook’s first voyage of discovery in the Endeavour. The Kookaburra is only native to open woodland and forests of Eastern Australia, with the exception of Cape York (it was introduced to south-western Australia and Tasmania). It doesn’t occur in New Guinea.
Kookaburra (in various forms) was recorded from different indigenous languages,…Perhaps the earliest is that of Bennett (1834), who recorded that ‘the Natives at Yas (sic) call the bird “Gogera or “Gogobera“.
Aboriginal names:; Guuguubarra in Wiradjuri, Jawawoodoo in Gooniyandi, Kuukakaka in Paakantyi.
Common name: Kookaburra
Binomial name: Dacelo novaeguineae
First described: Johann Hermann 1783 (New Guinea specimen)
Distribution: Australian wide (Not NT)
From: Phillip, A. The Voyage of Governor Phillip to Botany Bay with an Account of the Establishment of the Colonies of Port Jackson and Norfolk Island; compiled from Authentic Papers, which have been obtained from the several Departments to which are added the Journals of Lieuts. Shortland, Watts, Ball and Capt. Marshall with an Account of their New Discoveries,….. London.
Collections:
British Library: Shelf mark: C.47.i.10
National Gallery Australia: NGA 2012.1466
National Library Australia: Bib ID 1165394
Royal Collection Trust: RCIN 1142204
Silent World: SF000022
State Library NSW: D Q78/26
State Library Victoria: RARELTF 994.02 P54V
References:
Crittenden, V. A Bibliography Of The First Fleet. ACT 1982 : 180
Ferguson, J. A. Bibliography of Australia Volumes 1-8, Canberra 1976: 47
Hill, J. The Hill Collection of Pacific Voyages. San Diego 1974 :. 1346
McCormick, T. First Views of Australia 1788-1825. Sydney: 1987
Wantrup, J. Australian Rare Books. Sydney 1987: pp.59-64, pp.127-128, p.345-5, ill. p.63
