MARIA SIBILLA MERIAN. 
29 
Vellmn. Numerous others are to be found in public 
collections at Petersburgh, and in the cabinets of 
Holland and Germany. 
The acquirements of Madam Merian are certainly 
upon the whole very remarkable, but her abilities 
as an artist, and the taste displayed in the arrange- 
ment of the objects which she depicts, may be said 
to be in some measure unique. Many ladies have 
distinguished themselves as successful aspirants after 
distinction in the Fine Arts, but none, excepting 
the subject of the present memoir, have been cele- 
brated for the performance of a work so replete 
with artist-like feeling, as that of the insects of 
Surinam, which is certainly more elegant and taste- 
ful in the composition of the objects brought together 
upon the plates than any of its cotemporaries ; and 
without instituting any unnecessary or invidious 
comparison, we rather thhik, in these respects, her 
pictures have not been surpassed by’ any works of 
art of a similar description, by the moderns, to whom 
her method of arranging and combining her figures 
may serve as a. lesson. Her manner of introducing 
the insects in their various stages of metamoiphosis, 
in comiexion with the plants upon which they 
feed, is, in our opinion, not only very instructive 
but extremely elegant, and her skill in composition 
has almost invariably led her to do this in an artist- 
like pleasing way. 
Her opportunities, no doubt, eminently served her 
in these respects, for she may be said to have been 
bom an artist, surrounded at the period of her early 
