MERIAN, MATTHEW (15931650)

This article appears in Volume V18, Page 164 of the Encyclopedia Britannica.

Encyclopedia Britannica - Main :: MEC-MIC

MERIAN, MATTHEW (15931650) , Swiss engraver, was born in Basel, on the 25th of September 1593. The family came originally from near Delemont, but in his grandfather's time settled in Basel, where in 1553 it obtained the burghershj,
of the city. As

Matthew

early showed signs of artistic tastes, he was placed (1609) under the care of Dietrich Meyer, a painter and engraver of Zurich (15721658). He went' on to

Nancy

NANCY

in 1613, where he already displayed considerable talents as an engraver on copper. After studying in Paris,

Stuttgart

STUTTGART

(1616) and the Low Countries, he came to Frankfort, where in 1618 he married the eldest daughter of J. T. de Bry, who was a publisher and bookseller as well as an engraver.

Merian

MERIAN,
MATTHEW
(1593–1650)

worked for some time with his father-in-law in

Oppenheim

OPPENHEIM

, but then returned to Basel, whence he came back (1624) to Frankfort after Bry's death (1623), in order to take over his business;
M. cucullatus, the hooded merganser of North America, is in size intermediate between M. albellus and M. serrator; the male is easily recognizable by his broad semicircular crest, bearing a fanshaped patch of white, and his elongated subscapulars of white edged with black. The conformation of the trachea in the male of M. merganser, M. serrator and M. cucullatus is very like that of the ducks of the genus Clangula, but M. albellus has a less exaggerated development more resembling that of the

ordinary

ORDINARY (med. Lat. ordinarius, Fr. ordinaire)

Fuligula.' From the southern hemisphere two species of Mergus have been described, M. octosetaceus or brasilianus, L. P. Vieillot (N. Diet. d'Hist. naturelle, ed. 2, vol. xiv. p. 222; Gal. des oiseaux, torn. ii. p. 209, pl. 283), inhabiting

South

SOUTH
SOUTH, ROBERT (1634–1716)

America, of which but few specimens have been obtained, having some general resemblance to M. serrator, but much more darkly coloured, and M. australis, Hombron and Jacquemont (Ann. sc. nat. zoologie, ser. 2, vol. xvi. p. 320; Voy. au Pol Sud, oiseaux, pl. 31, fig. 2), known only by the unique example in the Paris Museum procured by the French Antarctic expedition in the Auckland Islands.
Often associated with the mergansers is the genus Merganetta, the so-called torrent-ducks of

South

SOUTH
SOUTH, ROBERT (1634–1716)

America, of which six species have been described; but they possess spiny tails and have their wings armed with a spur. These with Hymenolaemus Malacorhynchus, the blue duck of New Zealand, and Salvadorina waigiuensis of Waigiou are placed in the sub-family Merganettinae. (A. N.)

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