The Artillery Book

16th century explosives and fireworks

'Artilleriebuch' (BSB Cgm 909) by Walther Litzelmann was recently digitised and uploaded by the Bavarian State Library.

It is a ~500 page paper manuscript from 1582 filled with sketches of bombs, cannons and fireworks, for the most part. The elaborate titlepage advises (thanks NINA!) that Litzelmann belonged to the Bavarian Armoury or Arsenal at Ingolstadt and that the secrets of saltpetre and gunpowder production would be revealed within.

There are no references to the manuscript or the author online and I would speculate that it is most likely a compilation of designs and recipes from earlier sources.
[See George's detailed comments below]

Previously: combat.

Cuban Critters

These illustrations are from an atlas of twenty plates that constitutes one volume of 'Histoire Physique, Politique et Naturelle de l'ile de Cuba' (1838-1857), online via the Biodiversity Heritage Library.

The BHL has a few more versions (or volumes) here : I think the fourth entry has all 13 volumes from the series, which had an overall editor/author in the Spanish botanist and anarchist, Ramon de la Sagra, who was the Director of the Botanical Gardens in Cuba.

Some of the plates from this series of twenty would make good colouring-in material to while away a child's rainy afternoon I suspect (there are plenty of outlined little beasties in the unseen balance of plates; similar to a couple of images above). At full size, the images are >4000px on the short side. At the BHL site, choose a plate from the menu in the left sidebar and hit the print icon to load an enlarged version in a pop-up window and right click to download. Easy.

Previously: Cuba.

UPDATE: The BHL blog Book of the Week feature for July 21, 2011.