Biology

In this poster-sized work, the first publication of observations made with a microscope, Cesi and Stelluti studied the anatomy of the bee. The text includes classical references to bees as well as new knowledge, integrated in a tabular outline.

Many textbooks begin their list of early microscopists with Leeuwenhoek, who published most of his discoveries in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. This volume is an anthology of many of those articles. Leeuwenhoek’s microscope had only a single, powerful lens.

Della Porta’s portrayal of a lynx on the title page of this and other works inspired Cesi with the name for his own Academy. Here, della Porta announced the existence of the Accademia Secretorum Naturae, an academy he founded in Naples cx. 1580 with the aim of discovering the secrets of nature...

The title page of this classical study by Stelluti displays the emblem of the Lynx. The crest with three bees is that of the powerful Barberini family.

This book by Colonna, a member of the Lynx and a major contributor to the Hernandez natural history of Mexico, is the first book containing copperplate engravings of plants.

This is the earliest published work on agriculture, a manual for managing a feudal estate. It is an ancestor to the early printed herbals, and explains what plants one must cultivate to be able to make the common remedies.

In this poster-sized work, the first publication of observations made with a microscope, Cesi and Stelluti studied the anatomy of the bee. The text includes classical references to bees as well as new knowledge, integrated in a tabular outline.

What Aristotle did for animals, his student Theophrastus did for plants, making the study of plants an essential topic for ancient natural philosophers. Theophrastus sought not merely to describe the appearances of plants, but like his mentor Aristotle, to ascertain their causes.

Charles L’Ecluse, or Clusius, created the Hortus Academicus garden at the University of Leiden where he was a professor. His works reported the latest discoveries in natural history from Alpine regions in Europe and from Spanish territories around the world.

Medieval remedies and natural knowledge: An explosion of 16th-century herbals dramatically extended the “materia medica” tradition deriving from ancient writers, assimilating a vast increase in the number of known plants.

Pliny’s Natural History defined the scope and breadth of the field of natural history. Natural history meant the description (or “historia”) of nature, as opposed to explaining its causes (or “natural philosophy”). Pliny died in 79 CE while investigating the eruption of Mt.

Galileo employed his scientific acumen to engage in the literary debates of the day. Here he considered the merits of Tasso and Ariosto, comparing both with Dante. Using his new physics of tensile strength, Galileo refuted Ariosto’s indiscriminate descriptions of giants.

Kepler’s contributions reached far beyond the realm of astronomy, to meteorology, mathematics, geology, mineralogy and crystallography. Kepler published this 24-page pamphlet, a study of the snowflake, as a New Year’s greeting for a friend.

Topsell’s natural history includes both familiar and exotic creatures, drawn from sources both new and old. Topsell describes the horse, reindeer and chameleon. He portrays the magnificent appearance of the rhinoceros in the artistic tradition of Dürer.

After studying with the chemist Robert Boyle and the naturalist John Ray, Sloane embarked on a voyage to Jamaica. In these two volumes, Sloane described about 800 species of plants he collected. Sloane included 48 extracts from Hernandez.

Herbals were illustrated, colored, and issued both in large folios and small, economical, hand-sized, field-guide formats like this one.

Levinus Vincent, a wealthy Dutch merchant with ties to the East Indies, created a spectacular natural history museum in Haarlem. Visiting dignitaries admired his museum, including Peter the Great and King Charles III of Spain.

Gerard, an estate manager for Queen Elizabeth’s chief executive, was in contact with naturalists around the world who sent him both plants and soil to grow them in. The first illustration of the “Virginia potato” appears in this volume.

This travel narrative and encyclopedia presented the most up-to-date information about China based on Jesuit sources and the knowledge of commercial traders.

Erasmus Darwin, the grandfather of Charles Darwin, propounded an evolutionary theory in this widely popular didactic poem on plants. In Part 2, “Loves of the Plants,” he inserted a footnote about manzanilla (also known as chamomile).

The body in mechanical philosophy: Descartes applied the mechanical philosophy to every field of natural knowledge, including cosmology, meteorology, the Earth, astronomy and, in this book, the human body.

The illustration of the heart in this French edition shows a different artistic style than the Latin edition.