Giclee reprint of an original lithograph from Volume VI of Saint-Hilaire and Cuvier’s Histoire Naturelle des Mammifères, published in Paris in 1824. 

The Histoire Naturelle des Mammifères is a monumental 19th-century scientific publication issued in 72 parts between 1824 and 1842. Masterminded by French naturalists Étienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire and Frédéric Cuvier, the work comprises over 400 hand-colored lithographs depicting global wildlife. Unlike previous natural history illustrations based on stiff museum taxidermy, these plates were drawn entirely from living specimens housed at the Menagerie of the Jardin des Plantes in Paris to accurately document natural postures and behaviors. It remains a definitive milestone in the history of science, celebrated for introducing lithography to zoological illustration and standardizing early modern mammalian classification