"The Red-Squared Slug; Triboniophorus graeffei var. quadratus - c. 1890," 2026

Glass Jar Specimen, Two Taxonomic Models (taxidermist unknown), and Archival Correspondence.

These objects once belonged to two nineteenth-century personal collections. The handwritten letter and the wet specimen [an impaled slug preserved on a thorn of Crataegus Orientalis] were found among the belongings of Henry Baker Tristram (1822–1906 - the British cleric, ornithologist, and explorer of the Levant), in Durham, England, and later entered collections associated with the Natural History Museums in UK.

The two anatomical models came from the research materials of the Swiss naturalist Eduard Heinrich Graeffe (1833–1916), after whom the Red Triangle Slug (Triboniophorus graeffei) is named for his collecting work in Samoa. These models later entered Slovenia's Natural History Museum's archive in Ljubljana.

Together the objects refer to a now-lost taxonomic note describing a rare morphological variation of Triboniophorus graeffei observed in Western Queensland, marked by a peculiar square-shaped dermal pattern.

The anomaly surfaced in correspondence between Graeffe and Tristram after their meeting at the International Congress of Zoology in Paris in 1889.

In a conversation, Tristram had recounted an oral Christian Orthodox legend from Cyprus describing a pagan saint whose epileptic visions foretold the emergence of a future ("false") prophet and his sign within a blood-marked veil, resembling the Veil of Veronica. The central image of her visions was a fluctuating red square appearing on a piece of cloth.

Soon after hearing this story, Graeffe received specimens of slugs bearing a similar square marking and sent several to Tristram, noting a European folk belief that certain molluscs could cure persistent warts, an ailment the anti-Mohammadian cleric reportedly suffered since his fieldwork in Palestine, where he most probably contracted it through intimate contact.

All these items and their detailed historical and academic relevance are part of a lecture designed by Hasan.