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The Royal Society: Science in the Making

Painting, Sumatra dugong by [William Clift]

Reference number: PT/73/8/18

Date: 1820

Description

Plate 25 showing a study of a young female dugong [Dugong dugon], a specimen sent to Everard Home by Thomas Stamford Raffles. With faint pencil sketches of the form of the tail, lower right. The work is inscribed with publication and plate details. Not signed. Royal Society stamp verso with the inscription 'On a scale of two inches to a foot'.

Subject: Zoology / Anatomy

Published in Philosophical Transactions as part of paper titled 'Some account of the Dugong' by Thomas Stamford Bingley Raffles.

Read to the Royal Society on 18 May 1820.

Reference number
PT/73/8/18
Earliest possible date
1820
Physical description
Watercolour on paper
Page extent
2 pages
Format
Watercolour
Digital version available on The Royal Society Picture Library
View Digital version available on The Royal Society Picture Library (external link, opens in new tab)

Creator names

William Clift

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Thomas Stamford Bingley Raffles

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Citation

William Clift, Thomas Stamford Bingley Raffles, Painting, Sumatra dugong by [William Clift], 1820, PT/73/8/18, The Royal Society Archives, London, https://makingscience.royalsociety.org/items/pt_73_8_18/painting-sumatra-dugong-by-william-clift, accessed on 10 November 2025

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  • Philosophical Transactions

    The 'Philosophical Transactions' collection comprises manuscript versions of papers published in The Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, the world’s first and longest continuously running journal dedicated to science.

    Dates: 1802 - 1865

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