Mammals of Australia – 1869 – Prints by Helena Forde & Harriett Scott

Before wildlife photography, Sydney learned its animals from lithograph and letterpress. These plates — wallaby, dingo, platypus, flying fox, koala under the old name native bear, quoll as native cat — come out of the Scott sisters’ scientific art world: Harriett Scott and Helena Forde, working for commissions that sat beside Gerard Krefft’s museum science. The title’s 1869 is the easy trap; Krefft’s Snakes of Australia is 1869, but The Mammals of Australia illustrated by the sisters for the Council of Education was issued by the Government Printer in 1871.

Ash Island girls with a museum Rolodex — that’s the short version. Their moths and butterflies made the reputation; snakes, fossils and mammals paid the bills in hard years. The plates still look like classroom authority: profile view, enough fur to count, a caption that thought “opossum” covered possums. These are colonial science pictures, not modern field guides.

This isn’t a Sydney street post. It’s here because this blog collects the colony’s paper museum as well as its sandstone.

‘The Australian Hedgehog’ — 1869 lithograph by Helena Forde & Harriett Scott (period title for the echidna).

‘The Black-Tailed Wallaby’ — 1869 print from The Mammals of Australia series by Helena Forde & Harriett Scott.

‘The Common Opossum’ — 1869 print (period title for a common brushtail / related possum).

‘The Dingo’ — 1869 lithograph by Helena Forde & Harriett Scott.

‘The Duck-Billed Platypus’ — 1869 print from The Mammals of Australia.

‘The Flying Fox’ — 1869 lithograph of an Australian fruit bat.

‘The Kangaroo’ — 1869 print by Helena Forde & Harriett Scott.

‘The Kangaroo’ — second 1869 plate from the same series.

‘The Native Bear’ — 1869 print (period title for the koala).

‘The Native Cat’ — 1869 print (period title for a quoll).

‘The Ring-Tailed Opossum’ — 1869 print (period title for the ringtail possum).

‘The Sea Leopard’ — 1869 print (leopard seal) from The Mammals of Australia.

‘The Sooty Opossum’ — 1869 print from the Forde & Scott mammal series.

‘The Tasmanian Tiger’ — 1869 print of the thylacine (Thylacinus cynocephalus).

‘The Wombat’ — 1869 lithograph by Helena Forde & Harriett Scott.