ZOOLOGICAL
Origins

HISTORY
Although the Arbuckle Brothers Coffee Company claimed for itself a copyright date of 1890 for this series, the illustrations on which the cards were based were not originally commissioned by Arbuckles', but rather had been previously published in one or more natural history books. Thus far I can date three of them back to 1864, one of them back to 1865, two more to 1876, and 40 others at least as far back as 1885, although I suspect that even those were likely published somewhat earlier.

45 of the 46 drawings that I've located so far can be found in Vol. I of a 3-volume set of books entitled: Animate Creation; POPULAR EDITION OF "OUR LIVING WORLD," A NATURAL HISTORY by The Rev. J. G. Wood. Revised and Adapted to American Zoology, by Joseph B. Holder, M.D., published in 1885 by Selmar Hess, New York. This first volume is devoted to "Mammalia" and the illustrations that Arbuckles' selected represent only a small portion of the nearly 350 illustrations to be found in this one book.

All but one of those 45 appear as black and white illustrations, probably wood block engravings. Only the Puma is a full-color lithographed plate. Interestingly, this plate, along with all the other color plates, was actually printed separately from the book itself, by L. Prang & Co., and then pasted to the appropriate page by the publisher. Of the 44 black and white drawings, ten appear as full page plates and the rest as smaller illustrations scattered throughout the text.

One drawing not found in Animate Creation is the Tiger, which I've located in Vol. 1 of a 6-volume German series, the first edition of A. C. Brehm's Illustrirtes Thierleben, published in 1864 in Hamburg. Two other drawings also found in this earlier volume are the Puma (in black & white only) and the Buansuah. Vol. 2 of this same series, published in 1865, includes the Reindeer.

I've also located two of these same illustrations, the Otocyon and the Whallabee, in an earlier J. G. Wood book on Mammalia entitled: The Illustrated Natural History, published in 1876 by George Routledge and Sons, London. This edition was also republished, page for page but reduced to about 7/8 of the original size, at a later (unknown) date as the First American Edition by The Federal Book Company of New York. The reduction in page size for this edition has a somewhat detrimental effect on the quality of the illustrations (and even the legibility of the text, I'd have to say).

In 1886, yet another J. G. Wood book, Wood's Illustrated Natural History, was published by the New York office of George Routledge and Sons, and contains matching illustrations for the Gorilla, Zebra, Bison and Mullingong.

Subsequent to Arbuckles' 1890 copyright date, I've run across a book entitled: All About Animals, published in 1900 by McLoughlin Brothers of New York. This volume contains 22 of the illustrations. Again, all of them appear in black and white and reproduce the earlier book illustrations, not the altered versions that Arbuckles' used on the cards.

Additional research by Jerry Anderson has turned up a book edited by Richard Lydekker entitled: Library of Natural History, published in 1901 by The Saalfield Publishing Company of New York. This volume includes the Buansuah (identified as Indian Wild Dog) and Orang-Outang.

For comparison with the Arbuckle versions of these illustrations, I've added a scan of each one, taken from Animate Creation (except for the Tiger, which is taken from Thierleben), to the page for its corresponding Arbuckle Zoological card. Only Opossum, Zebu, Leopard, and Indian Rhinoceros are not accounted for in either Animate Creation or the first edition of Brehm's Thierleben. It's interesting to note that, in almost all cases, the Arbuckle cards faithfully reproduced the principal animal in each drawing, while altering the format, simplifying the background and general surroundings, and repositioning or sometimes completely excising secondary members of the species that appeared in the original. Of course, color was added for the Arbuckle versions and, in a couple of cases (Chetah vs. Cheetah and Gnoo vs. Gnu), the spelling of the critter's name was altered. Several also bear a different "classical appellation".

Where practical, I've scanned these drawings in their originally published sizes, although in about a dozen cases I've had to reduce them slightly for space considerations. In those cases, the original size is noted above the image. I've also attempted to identify the artist responsible for each illustration, when I can decipher a name or signature in those that have them. Unfortunately, the Animate Creation publisher chose not to credit any of the artists or engravers and even, in some cases, seems to have intentionally obliterated signatures which appear to have previously been present in the drawings. Interestingly, however, several of those signatures are quite legible in the illustrations published in the much later All About Animals book.

It also appears that Arbuckles' appropriated some of the text from Animate Creation (or one of its predecessors) as the basis for the descriptions used for each animal in its "Album of Illustrated Natural History". These descriptions are necessarily abridged, and somewhat rearranged and paraphrased, but it's quite clear that Arbuckles' freely lifted the gist of them, and without any attribution. Here are a couple of examples:

SPECULATION
Clearly, even though 90% of the illustrations found on the Arbuckle cards can be found in Animate Creation, the 1864-65 Brehm's Thierleben and the 1876 The Illustrated Natural History confirm earlier publication dates for at least a half dozen of the drawings. Also, as noted above, not only does Animate Creation not attempt to credit the illustrators or engravers, there actually appears to be some attempt to discredit a few. Either that, or some of the engravings that were used "just happened" to be severely worn precisely in the area of the artist's signature! In any event, this leads me to believe that it's likely that all of the illustrations in Animate Creation originated elsewhere.

Secondly, several of the scientific names, or "classical appellations", used on the Arbuckle cards differ from those found in Animate Creation. Certainly, this could simply mean that Arbuckles' updated these names to reflect any changes the scientific community had made to the animals' classifications in the period from 1885 to 1890. It seems unlikely to me, though, that Arbuckles' would have taken the trouble to do this and would have, in the interest of expediency, simply kept whatever names were found in its original source.

Thirdly, the Reverend John George Wood actually began producing natural history books in England as early as 1852, and seems to have published numerous new, revised, and/or reworked editions until his death in 1889. Animate Creation was apparently an Americanized version of one of these earlier works. Books with titles such as The Illustrated Natural History (1852, 1863), Routledge's Popular Natural History (1867), The New Illustrated Natural History (1882), etc., were apparently bestsellers in their time. It seems likely that Wood used many of the same artists and drawings to illustrate these earlier books and perhaps one of them actually served as Arbuckles' true source. In addition, later editions of Brehm's Tierleben, published in the 1870s and 1880s, were expanded from the original 1860s edition and, I believe, included the work of a number of additional artists. Also, of the four artists/illustrators that I've been able to clearly identify (representing 40 of the drawings), three are German and one English, suggesting a European origin for the drawings.

And finally, since only 45 out of the 50 illustrations that Arbuckles' used are included in Animate Creation, with one additional drawing found in Brehm's Thierleben, 4 more have to be accounted for. It seems to me that if Arbuckles' was going to base their cards on previously published drawings, they would more than likely have chosen them all from a single source, rather than just getting 90% from one source and then getting the other 10% elsewhere, especially since many more illustrations were available to choose from in Animate Creation (including different ones for the missing animals).

As my time and resources permit, I'm going to attempt to locate copies of the natural history books referred to above, and perhaps others, to see if I can further pin down the true source(s) for this Zoological card series. And you can be sure that, whatever I learn, I'll be happy to share it with my fellow collectors here on my site! On the other hand, if any of you are already ahead of me on this and have additional information available that would shed more light on this subject, by all means please get in touch with me!