Giclee reprint of an original lithograph from the Zoology Volume of Albert du Petit-Thouars’ Voyage autour du Monde sur la Fregate La Venus, published in Paris in 1846. This highly influential multi-volume masterwork documented extensive biological collections gathered across the Pacific Ocean, the Galapagos Islands, California, and the Indian Ocean. The mammal (mammalogy) section of the text was prepared in part by the celebrated French zoologist Isidore Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, featuring meticulous descriptions and striking hand-colored plates of newly cataloged terrestrial and marine mammals encountered during the voyage.

This fine historical engraving is "Mammifères Pl. 2" (Plate 2). The scientific name used in the text, Mephitis mesomelas (originally described by Hinrich Lichtenstein), is a historical junior synonym for the striped skunk (Mephitis mephitis), specifically referencing a regional variation or subspecies collected along the Pacific coast of North America during the voyage.