RJ's Inspiration #009 🏔

RJ's Inspiration

weekly viz to inspire you too

👁 VERTICAL & LATITUDINAL DISTRIBUTION OF ANIMAL LIFE
is the last and most extraordinary plate in John Bartholomew's Atlas of Zoogeography (1911). The detail shown here is part of the profile of Asia and Australia, one of twelve similar profiles canvasing the entire globe. Green shading shows the limit of crops (here: palms, in other profiles: wine or maize). Red and blue styled lines show where animals range. The mountains on display here include Kanchanjanga, third highest mountain in the world, and Godwin Austen, known today as K2.

What I love about this tableau is how it balances pictorial depiction and abstraction to show such a huge space, the 3-D surface of the earth, in a simple view. Space is compressed and edges are smoothed. Range distributions are obviously generalized. The line styling is crisply differentiated, making it possible to track each animal.

Each of the views in VERTICAL & LATITUDINAL DISTRIBUTION deserve your attention. In addition to the rest of the continents, neighboring profiles detail the vertical distribution of marine life (Fishes and Molluscs). Its treatment of islands is excellent. Explore the whole composition at David Rumsey (link).

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Please contact me to share your favorite viz, offer any advice for how this newsletter experiment can be improved, or say hello. -RJ