Grand Duchess Maria Nikolaevna of Russia reading in a formal portrait (1906).
Grand Duchess Maria (1899-1918) was the third daughter of Tsar Nicholas II of Russia and Tsarina Alexandra Fyodorovna (Alix of Hesse). Her murder following the Russian Revolution of 1917 resulted in her canonization as a passion bearer by the Russian Orthodox Church.
Should we make the “Frog Days of Summer” a thing? Only if we can get more use out of these fantastic plates from August Johann Rösel von Rosenhof’s, Historia naturalis ranarum nostratium(1758).
In it,
Rösel
describes the natural history of all then-known frogs and toads indigenous to the Nuremberg region in Germany. The title is noteworthy first for the extensive, accurate information in the text, printed in two columns in both German and Latin.
