Laura Gascoigne

Frills and furbelows

<p class="p1">The 600 pages of stunning plates in this sumptuous new Taschen book could win Ernst Haeckel a whole new generation of followers</p>

issue 23 September 2017

Over the winter of 1859–60, a handsome young man could be seen patrolling the shores of the Gulf of Messina in a rowing boat, skimming the water’s surface with a net. The net’s fine mesh was not designed for fishing, and the young man was not a Sicilian fisherman. He was the 25-year-old German biologist Ernst Haeckel from Potsdam searching for minute plankton known as Radiolaria.

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