These images are all from a 2nd (forgotten) ebay link to John Johnston's Historiæ Naturalis. I don't think I've seen all of these mostly bizarre engravings before. But between the copying and borrowing that went on with the printers etc and my perennial trawling of similar material, it's always hard specifically remembering. To the best of my understanding, these sections of Johnston's book are nowhere else online. Excellent beasties.
[yesterday's Johnston post]
[previous vintage whale engravings]
Addit: I'm happily proved wrong: Loumez tells us that the whole of Historiæ Naturalis is actually online at Universitätsbibliothek Göttingen [search author: 'Jonston']. But these are photocopy quality.
I've seen several of these in a Dover Publications book I have. I think it was "1300 Real and Fanciful Animals: From Seventeenth Century Engravings"
ReplyDeleteThanks cavalaxis, I ran across that yesterday. I imagine all or the majority of the 250 images from Historiæ Naturalis are in there as the book is by Johnston and Merian the Younger. Pretty cheap too.
ReplyDeleteThese are amazing!
ReplyDeleteThe effort put into etching all these must have been incredible...
btw, I am absolutely enthralled with this blog. You're the first thing I check on my bloglines. Please keep up the great work.
ReplyDeleteMore Jonston here.
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