NO. 58. — 1907.] JOAN GIDEON LOTEN, F.R.S. 



255 



John Gideon Loten, Esq ; a governor in Ceylon ; and myself. 

 Twelve only were engraved and published : soon after which the 

 undertaking appeared so arduous that the design was given over. 

 It would be injustice to Mr. Loten not to say that the etchings 

 are taken from his fine collection of drawings made in India : for 

 he alleviated the cares of life with the delicious pursuits of the 

 study of nature. I prevaled [sic] on my two friends to unite with 

 me in presenting the learned John Reinhold Forster with the 

 plates. I also bestowed on him three others engraven at my own 

 expense, before the work was dropped. These were never pub- 

 lished in England ; but when Dr. Forster left our island, he took 

 the whole with him, and in 1781 printed, at Halle, in Saxony, an 

 edition very highly improved, and translated into Latin and 

 German. . ... 



Though neither Pennant nor Forster states the fact, the 

 engraver of the fifteen plates* above spoken of was Peter 

 Mazell ;f and it was in the execution of these that this man 

 played such pranks with the original drawings lent by Loten 



He also says : — " I was induced to prefer that [zoology] of India from 

 my acquaintance with John Gideon Loten, esq. who had long been a 

 governor in more than one of the Dutch islands in the Indian ocean, 

 and with a laudable zeal had employed several most accurate artists in 

 delineating, on the spot, the birds and other subjects of natural his- 

 tory. He offered to me the use of them in a manner that showed his 

 liberal turn." (Then follow details similar to those given above.) 

 Pennant rightly calls the first edition a " fragment," since it has no 

 title-page or preface, and ends abruptly at p. 14. 



* They are as follows : — i. The Long-tailed Squirrel ; ii. Black and 

 White Falcon ; iii. The Little Horn Owl ; iv. The Red Wood-pecker ; v. 

 The Faciated Couroucou ; vi. The red-headed Cuckoo ; vii. The black- 

 capped Pigeon ; viii. The Tailor Bird ; ix. The red-tailed Water-Hen ; 

 x. The white-headed Ibis ; xi. The black-backed Goose ; xii. The black- 

 bellied Anhinga; xiii. Spotted-billed Duck, The Tiger Shark, and The 

 Ceylon Wrasse ; xiv. Double-spurred Partridge ; xv. Flammeous Fly- 

 catcher. All of these are from Ceylon specimens, except iv. and vii. 



f Bryan's Diet, of Painters and Engravers (new ed. by G. C. Williams, 

 1904) iii. 309 says : — " Mazell, Peter, an English engraver who flour- 

 ished in the second part of the 18th century and worked for Pennant 

 and Boydell, and all the engravings in Cordiner's ' Ruins and Romantic 

 Prospects in North Britain ' (1792), are by him." Pennant in his 

 Literary Life (3), speaking of his British Zoology (1761), says of the 

 plates in that work : «« They were all engraven by Mr. Peter Mazel, now 

 living, of whose skill and integrity I had ahvays occasion to speak well'* 



