Insects, plants, shells and flowers: here is a selection of books about nature, both scientific and poetic, from Europe and the world.
At bottom left, is the first edition of the French translation of Grew’s Anatomy of Plants (Paris, 1675).
Behind it is Buonanni’s famous work Recreatio mentis et occuli, in it’s first Latin edition of 1684.
Then comes the first edition of Ferrari’s De Florum cultura libri IV (Rome, 1633) with it’s beautiful representations of rare flowers and famous gardens.
To the right, the four quarto volumes are the entomology manual by Jacquelin du Val, Genera des coléoptères d’Europe, issued between 1857 and 1868.
The small vellum book in front is another book about insects, Redi’s master work: Experimenta circa generationem insectorum, (Amsterdam, 1670-1671).
We then make a short trip to Switzerland with Histoire des plantes vénéneuses de Suisse, by Vicat, printed in Yverdon in 1776, and Hagenbach’s Florae Basilensis (Basle, 1821-1834) with it’s charming printed cover.
Finally in the middle, two Japanese books: Mushirui gafu, the poetry book of insects beautifully illustrated by Utamaro, and Shasei kemono zuga, “Collection of animal drawings from nature” (Kyôto, 1803).
