Art Forms from the Abyss: Ernst Haeckel's Images from the HMS Challenger Expedition

At the end of On the Origin of Species, Darwin concluded that life's great evolutionary journey had resulted in "endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful." Perhaps nothing better illustrates Darwin's view than Ernst Haeckel's drawings of hundreds of species of radiolaria—a group of single-celled, microscopic, infinitely varied zooplankton. As this 19th-century German biologist named and classified the delicate radiolaria, he also drew them and later added exquisite color effects during the lithographic printing process. To make more accessible the "lost treasure" of Haeckel's plankton illustrations, a group of marine scientists at Bangor University in Wales photographed 60 plates from Haeckel's 222 drawings of organisms collected from deep ocean waters worldwide. The authors' excellent introductory essay includes a discussion of the ecological importance of plankton and the historical background on the scientific exploration of the oceans, as well as an evaluation of Haeckel's considerable scientific and artistic legacies.