1 After the fall of Constantinople in 1453, and even before, during the wars and calamities that preceded that event.

2 The translation of [Aristotle’s] books on animals by Theodorus of Gaza — [born c. 1400] a Greek from Thessalonica who went to Italy in 1430 and died c. 1475— appeared for the first time at Venice in 1476.

3 Shortly before 1460.

4 In 1492.

5 [The early European settlement of India began with the Portuguese expedition of Vasco da Gama (c. 1460-1524) who left Lisbon in 1497 and, rounding the Cape of Good Hope, reached the city of Calicut in May 1498.]

6 Franciscus Massaria, In nonum Plinii de naturali historia librum castigations et annotationes, Basle, 1537, in quarto. There is also an edition of Paris, Vascosan, 1542, in quarto, which contains the ninth and the thirty-second books of Pliny.

7 Paolo Giovio [bishop of Nocera], born at Como in 1483, died at Florence in 1552, is well known as one of the most elegant Italian writers. His first work, not so famous as the others, is a Latin treatise on fishes: De Romanis piscibus libellus ad Ludovicum Borbonium, cardinalem amplissimum, Rome, 1524, in folio, and 1527 in octavo. There is an Italian translation by [Carlo] Zancaruolo, Venice, 1560, in octavo.

8 Pierre Gilles or Gyllius was born at Alby in 1490, traveled in Italy, and was sent to the Levant by Francis I. Obliged for lack of support to join the army of Soliman II, he bought his way out again, returned by way of Hungary and Germany, and died in Rome at the house of the cardinal d’Armagnac in 1555. His little treatise De Gallicis et Latinis nominibus piscium Massiliensium was written before his travels to the Levant and was [first] printed in 1533 [as a summary chapter to his excerpts from Aelianus].

9 This is the book mentioned above [note 8]: Ex Aeliani historia per Petrum Gyllium Latini facti, itemque ex Porphyrio, Heliodoro, Oppiano, turn eodem Gyllio luculentis accessionibus aucti, libri XVI, de vi et natura animalium, Lyons, Gryphe, 1533 and 1535, in quarto.

10 Edward Wotton, physician at Oxford, lived in the first half of the sixteenth century [1492-1555]. His book, titled De differentiis animalium libri decem and dedicated to the young King Edward VI, was printed in Paris by Vascosan in 1552, one volume in folio. It is remarkable for its typography.

11 Adam Lonicer [1528-1586], Naturalis historiae opus novum, in quo tractatur de natura et viribus arborum fruticum, herbarum, animantium’q; terrestrium, volatilium et aquatilium, Frankfurt, 1551, in folio. [His chapter on fishes, titled “De Piscium natura,” within which he includes accounts of crustaceans, mollusks, and cetaceans, is found on pp. 300-309.]

12 Pierre Belon, born in the county (comté) of Maine in 1517, studied in Germany under Valerius Cordus, traveled in Italy and throughout the Levant, and returned to Paris in 1550. Charles IX lodged him in the château of Madrid in the Bois de Boulogne, and there he was occupied in translating Dioscorides when he was assassinated in the Bois on his way to Paris in 1564. In ichthyology, we have his Histoire naturelle des estranges poissons marins, avec la vraie peincture et description du daulphin, et de plusieurs autres de son espèce, Paris, 1551, in quarto; De aquatilibus, libri duo, Paris, 1553, in octavo oblong; a French translation of the same work, under the title La Nature et diversité des poissons, avec leurs pourtraicts, representez au plus près du naturel, Paris, 1555, in octavo oblong. His Observations de plusieurs singularitez et choses mémorables, trouvées en Grèce, Asie, Judée, Égypte, Arabie, etc., Paris, 1553, 1554, and 1555, in quarto, also contains divers articles on fishes. [For more on Belon, see Gudger (Eugene Willis), “The five great naturalists of the sixteenth century, Belon, Rondelet, Salviani, Gesner and Aldrovandi: A chapter in the history of ichthyology,” Isis, vol. 22, no. 1, 1934, pp. 26-28; Cole (Francis Joseph), A history of comparative anatomy: from Aristotle to the eighteenth century, London: Macmillan, 1949, pp. 60-62; Allen (Elsa Guerdrum), “The history of American ornithology before Audubon,” Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, new series, vol. 41, no. 3, 1951, pp. 410-412.]

13 Lacepède later described it [this “parrotfish,” among the wrasses] under the name Cheiline scare [Cheilinus scarus; see Lacepède (Bernard Germain Étienne), Histoire naturelle des poissons, Paris: Plassan, 1801, vol. 3, p. 530].

14 Hippolyte Salviani, from Città di Castello, 1514-1572, physician to Cardinal Cervin, who was pope for six weeks under the name Marcellus II, as well as to his successor Pope Julius III, published his Aquatilium animalium historiae, in folio, from 1554 to 1558; it was reprinted in Venice in 1600 and 1602. [I have been unable to locate copies of the latter two editions; for more on Salviani, see Gudger (Eugene Willis), “The five great naturalists of the sixteenth century, Belon, Rondelet, Salviani, Gesner and Aldrovandi: A chapter in the history of ichthyology,” Isis, vol. 22, no. 1, 1934, pp. 30-32.]

15 Guillaume Rondelet, born at Montpellier in 1507, son of a pharmacist, was named professor in that town in 1545, traveled with cardinal de Tournon in France, Italy, and the Netherlands, returned to Montpellier in 1551, and died in 1566. He was assisted in the composition of his book on fishes by Guillaume Pellicier, bishop of that town. The first part, Libri de piscibus marinis, appeared in Lyons in 1554, in folio. It is divided into eighteen books: the first four treat of generalities; the fifth through the fifteenth describe the different fishes; the sixteenth, cetaceans, turtles, and seals; the seventeenth, mollusks; the eighteenth, crustaceans. The second part, Universae aquatilium historiae, is dated 1555 and comprises two books on testaceous species, one book on worms (vers) and zoophytes, three books on freshwater fishes, and one on amphibians. There is an abridged French translation of this work, Lyons, 1558, in quarto, titled L’Histoire entière des poissons, by Guillaume Rondelet, Esq., etc. [For more on Rondelet, see Gudger (Eugene Willis), “The five great naturalists of the sixteenth century, Belon, Rondelet, Salviani, Gesner and Aldrovandi: A chapter in the history of ichthyology,” Isis, vol. 22, no. 1, 1934, pp. 28-30; Oppenheimer (Jane Marion), “Guillaume Rondelet,” Bulletin of the history of medicine, vol. 4, 1936, pp. 817-834; Cole (Francis Joseph), A history of comparative anatomy: from Aristotle to the eighteenth century, London: Macmillan, 1949, pp. 62-72.]

16 [According to Nissen (Nissen (Claus), Schöne Fischbuch: Kurze Geschichte der ichthyologischen Illustration, Stuttgart: Lothar Hempe, 1951, p. 83; Die Zoologisches Buchillustration. Ihre Bibliographic und Geschichte, vol. 2, pt. 2: Geschichte der zoologischen Buchillustration, Stuttgart: Anton Hiersemann, 1972, p. 115; see also Baudrier (Henri Louis), Bibliographie Lyonnaise: recherches sur les imprimeurs, libraires, relieurs et fondeurs de lettres de Lyon au XVI^e siècle [publiées et continuées par Baudrier Julien], Paris: F. de Nobele, 1964, vol. 2, p. 172), Rondelet’s artist was Georges Reverdi, an “engraver preferred by publishers” at Lyons, born in the region of Dombes in eastern France and active from about 1529, when he worked in Italy, to about 1560 at Lyons. In preparing the woodcuts that illustrate Rondelet’s book, Reverdi is said to have worked directly from the author’s drawings (Bauchot Marie-Louise, pers. comm., 7 September 1993; see also Kolb (Katharina), Guillaume Rondelet et les “Libri de piscibus,” Mémoire Maîtrise Histoire de l’Art (Université de Paris IV, Sorbonne), 1992, vol. 1, pp. 182-187).]

17 Conrad Gessner, the most knowledgeable naturalist of the sixteenth century, born in Zurich in 1516, died in 1565, among a multitude of other works has left us a great monument in his Historiae animalium [1551-1587], printed in Zurich in five books that are usually bound in three volumes in folio. The fourth book, which treats of aquatic animals and is the largest of these volumes —Historiae animalium liber IV, qui est De piscium et aquatilium animantium natura— appeared in 1558. An edition not so handsome but more complete was printed at Frankfurt in 1604; another appeared in 1620, as well as an abridgment titled Nomenclator aquatilium animantium, Zurich, 1560, with the same figures. [For more on Gessner, see Gudger (Eugene Willis), “The five great naturalists of the sixteenth century, Belon, Rondelet, Salviani, Gesner and Aldrovandi: A chapter in the history of ichthyology,” Isis, vol. 22, no. 1, 1934, pp. 32-36; Allen (Elsa Guerdrum), “The history of American ornithology before Audubon,” Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, new series, vol. 41, no. 3, 1951, pp. 402-403; Wellisch (Hans H.), “Conrad Gessner: A bio-bibliography,” Journal of the Society for the Bibliography of Natural History, vol. 7, no. 2, 1975, pp. 151-247; Adler (Kraig) (ed.), Contributions to the history of herpetology, Oxford (Ohio): Society for the Study of Amphibians and Reptiles, 1989, pp. 7-8.]

18 Ulisse Aldrovandi, born at Bologna in 1522 of a noble family that still survives, spent his life and fortune in assembling the materials for his great natural history, in thirteen folio volumes [published in Bologna between 1599 and 1688], only four of which he himself published, namely, three on birds [1599-1603] and one on insects [1602]. He died in 1605, at the age of eighty-three. The volume on fishes and cetaceans, drawn up in part from his notes by his successor at Bologna, [Johannes] Cornelius Uterverius, was not published until 1613, but it was reprinted at Bologna in 1638 and 1644 and at Frankfurt in 1623, 1629, and 1640. [For more on Aldrovandi, see Gudger (Eugene Willis), “The five great naturalists of the sixteenth century, Belon, Rondelet, Salviani, Gesner and Aldrovandi: A chapter in the history of ichthyology,” Isis, vol. 22, no. 1, 1934, pp. 36-38; Allen (Elsa Guerdrum), “The history of American ornithology before Audubon,” Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, new series, vol. 41, no. 3, 1951, pp. 403-405.]

19 André Thevet [1502-1590], a friar, native of Angoulême, who accompanied [Pierre] Gilles [see note 8 above] on his journey to Greece in 1550, was with [Nicolas Durand de] Villegaignon [1510-1571] on his expedition to Brazil in 1555 and published his observations at Anvers in 1558, a small book in octavo, with woodcuts. In it he speaks of only two or three fishes [e.g., see his pp. 158-160].

20 Jean de Léry, from La Margalle near Saint-Seine in Burgundy, a protestant minister, born in 1536 [died 1613], went to Brazil in 1556 at the request of Villegaignon. He published the account of his journey [said to contain the earliest descriptions of Brazilian fishes; see Dean (Bashford), Bibliography of fishes, vol. 3, New York: Published by the American Museum of Natural History, 1923, p. 275] at La Rochelle in 1578, in octavo. It was reprinted several times [at Rouen, Paris, Geneva, etc.] and has been included in different collections. Chapter 12 of the book [pp. 185-193] treats of fishes and is not without interest. There are no figures.

21 Charles de l’Écluse (in Latin Carolus Clusius), botanist, born at Arras in 1526, was director of the gardens for emperors Maximilian II and Rudolph II; he died in 1609 while professor at Leiden. The book in question, titled Caroli Clusii exoticorum libri X, appeared in Anvers in 1605, one volume in folio.

22 Johannes de Laet, born at Antwerp in 1581, died in 1649, director of the Dutch West India Company, great promoter of geography, editor of Marcgrave [see note 25 below], and so on, is the author of several works, among them especially his Novus orbis, seu Descriptionis Indiae occidentalis, Leiden, 1633, one volume in folio. On pages 570-574 is a chapter titled “Pisces marini Brasiliensium” [in which he provides descriptions of some two dozen species and figures of five species. A hammerhead shark is described and illustrated on p. 576].

23 Juan Eusebio Nieremberg, a Jesuit born in Madrid in 1595 of a family originally from the Tyrol, died in 1658, wrote numerous works. His Historia naturae, maxime peregrinae, libri XVI, appeared at Anvers in 1635, in folio. It is a compilation in a pedantic style that does not proclaim its author as having any knowledge of the subject matter; however, it presents articles by authors then in manuscript form, such as Hernández [see note 24 below], and others; fishes are presented in the eleventh book.

24 Francisco Hernández de Toledo [1514-1587], primary physician to Philip II of Spain [was sent to Mexico in 1570 to collect and explore]. He composed a natural history of that country, embellished with more than twelve hundred paintings of plants and animals. As happens only too often, this work, which cost 60,000 ducats to produce, remained in manuscript, and it is not known what has become of it. Francisco Ximénes [1560?-1620] produced an abridgment without the drawings in Mexico City in 1615, a small volume in quarto. An Italian named Nardo Antonio Recchi [died 1595], primary physician of the kingdom of Naples, made excerpts of it in ten books, which were acquired by the prince de Cesi [Federico Cesi duca di Acquasparta, 1585-1630] and published in Rome in 1651, in one volume in folio, under the title Rerum medicarum Novae Hispaniae thesaurus, seu Plantarum, animalium, mineralium Mexicanorum historia…, with many woodcuts, and with long commentaries by Joannes Terentius [1576-1630], physician at Constance, and Johannes Faber [1574-1629], physician at Bamberg, both of whom were established at Rome, and the famous Fabius Columna [1567-1640]. Even longer commentaries were added to certain illustrations of plants and animals that Recchi had left without description, several of them representing objects foreign to Mexico, even animals of Asia and Africa, which were presented as though they were American. The basis of the text of this part rests on oral assertions by a Capuchin friar named Grégoire de Bolivar, collected by Faber. At the end of the volume are six essays by Francisco Fernández, who can be none other than Francisco Hernández, which seem to me to be his own originals with regard to the animal and mineral kingdoms, originals from which Recchi excerpted his ninth and tenth books. When use is made of this bizarre compilation, it is well to ascertain the author of the article consulted; on the other hand, there is very little about fishes in it, and only in the fifth book are there the little essays said to be by Fernández.

25 Willem Piso [1611-1678] was sent to Brazil by the Dutch West India Company, directed by De Laet, to serve as physician under Count Johan Maurits of Nassau-Siegen [1604- 1679], who governed that country from January 1637 to May 1644, and at the same time to gather specimens of the country’s natural production. For this purpose, De Laet gave him two young German mathematicians and physicians as collaborators; Georg Marcgrave, born at Meissen in 1610, and Heinrich Cralitz. The latter promptly died, but Marcgrave survived the climate and described with care many of the plants and animals; at the same time, he made astronomical and physical observations of all sorts. He died on a voyage to Guinea in 1644. Piso received permission from Count Maurits to have Marcgrave’s papers entrusted to De Laet, and his work on natural history was published in Leiden in 1648 in folio, following an essay by Piso on medicine in Brazil, under the title Historia naturalis Brasiliae. Marcgrave’s work is divided into eight books; the fourth is on fishes. The descriptions are entirely his own, and De Laet only added a few notes. The illustrations are taken from two collections painted at the request of Count Maurits, which he lent to De Laet for the purpose. After returning from Brazil in 1644, Maurits entered the service of Brandenburg and was made governor of Wesel and grand master of the order of Saint John, and he was elevated to the rank of prince in 1654. He died in 1679, governor of Berlin. These two collections, one in oils and the other in gouache, were arranged by Dr. Christian Mentzel [1622-1701; physician to Friedrich Wilhelm I, elector of Brandenburg]. They were placed in the royal library of Berlin, where they are still kept [these eight hundred or so pictures of Brazilian plants and animals were removed from the Preussische Staatsbibliothek in Berlin during World War II and are at present housed at the Jagiellon Library, Cracow, Poland; see Whitehead (Peter James Palmer), “The treasures at Grüssau,” New Scientist, vol. 94, no. 1302, 1982, pp. 226-231; Whitehead (Peter James Palmer) & Boeseman (Marinus), A portrait of Dutch seventeenth century Brazil: Animals, plants and people by the artists of Johan Maurits of Nassau, New York: North-Holland pub. Co, 1989, pp. 22, 34-35]. The first collection, by an unknown artist, remained there almost unknown until 1811, when [Johann Carl Wilhelm] Illiger [1775-1813] consulted it to remove doubts raised by Marcgrave’s book [see Illiger (Johann Karl Wilhelm), Prodromus systematis mammalium et avium: additis terminis zoographicis utriusque classis, eorumque versione germanica, Berlin: C. Salfeld, 1811, p. vi]. The second collection, which some believe to be by Marcgrave and others by Maurits himself, was brought to the attention of the public by Schneider in 1786 [see chap. 10, note 10], and Bloch had several drawings copied from it for his great lchthyologie [1785- 1797], but without seeming to suspect that they were drawn by the prince, and worse yet, adding and deleting and otherwise changing several things quite arbitrarily. We can see, for example, that he has completely distorted the drawing of a squirrelfish (holocentrum) to create his Bodianus pentacanthus [see Bloch (Marcus Elieser), Ichthyologie, ou Histoire naturelle générale et particulière des poissons. Avec des figures enluminées, dessinées d’après nature [tr. de l’Allemand par Laveaux Jean-Charles], Berlin: François de La Garde, 1785-1797, 12 pts in 6 vols, vol. 4, pp. 40-42, pl. 225]. These details are taken from the preface to the third part of the great Naturgeschichte der auslandischen Fische by Bloch [1785-1795, vol. 3, pp. iii-x], and in particular from three articles by [Martin Heinrich Karl] Lichtenstein [see chap. 16, note 52], included among the memoirs of the Royal Academy of Sciences of Berlin [Lichtenstein (Martin Heinrich Carl), “Die Werke von Marcgrave und Piso über die Naturgeschichte brasiliens, erläutert aus den wieder aufgefundenen Originalzeichnungen. I. Säugethiere,” Abhandlungen der physikalischen Klasse der Königlich-Preussischen Akademie der Wissenschaften aus den Jahren 1814-1815, 1818, pp. 201-222; “Die Werke von Marcgrave und Piso über die Naturgeschichte brasiliens, erläutert aus den wieder aufgefundenen Original-Abbildungen. II. Vögel,” Abhandlungen der physikalischen Klasse der Königlich-Preussischen Akademie der Wissenschaften aus den Jahren 1816-1817, 1819, pp. 155-178; “Die Werke von Marcgrave und Piso über die Naturgeschichte brasiliens, erläutert aus den wieder aufgefundenen Original-Abbildungen (fortsetzung). III. Amphibien,” Abhandlungen der physikalischen Klasse der Königlich-Preussischen Akademie der Wissenschaften aus den Jahren 1820-1821, 1822, pp. 237-254; “Die Werke von Marcgrave und Piso über die Naturgeschichte brasiliens, erläutert aus den wieder aufgefundenen Original-Abbildungen (fortsetzung). IV. Fische,” Abhandlungen der physikalischen Klasse der Königlich-Preussischen Akademie der Wissenschaften aus den Jahren 1820-1821, 1822, pp. 267-288; see also Lichtenstein (Martin Heinrich Carl), “Die Werke von Marcgrave und Piso über die Naturgeschichte brasiliens, erläutert aus den wieder aufgefundenen Original-Abbildungen. IV. Fische [continued],” Abhandlungen der physikalischen Klasse der Königlich-Preussischen Akademie der Wissenschaften aus den Jahre 1826, 1829, pp. 49-65]; but we have been fortunate enough to confirm them in part with our own eyes. Valenciennes obtained permission from the conservators of the library to copy these collections, and we are today able to compare them with Bloch’s copies and with nature and definitively fix the genera and species to which each fish should be referred. [For more on Piso, see Pies (Eike), Willem Piso (1611-1678). Begründer der kolonialen Medizin und Leibarzt des Grafen Johann Moritz von Nassau-Siegen in Brasilien: Eine Biographie, Düsseldorf: Interma-Orb, 1981, 227 p., ills; Whitehead (Peter James Palmer) & Boeseman (Marinus), A portrait of Dutch seventeenth century Brazil: Animals, plants and people by the artists of Johan Maurits of Nassau, New York: North-Holland pub. Co, 1989, 359 p. + [1] pl., ills. On Maurits, see Boogaart (Ernst van den), Hoetink (Hans R.) & Whitehead (Peter James Palmer) (eds), Johan Maurits van Nassau-Siegen, 1604-1679, a humanist prince in Europe and Brazil, The Hague: Johan Maurits van Nassau Stichting, 1979, 538 p. + [17] pls, ills. On Marcgrave, see Gudger (Eugene Willis), “George Marcgrave, the first student of American natural history,” Popular Science Monthly, vol. 81, 1912, pp. 250- 274; Whitehead (Peter James Palmer), “Georg Markgraf and Brazilian zoology,” in Boogaart (Ernst van den), Hoetink (Hans R.) & Whitehead (Peter James Palmer) (eds), Johan Maurits van Nassau-Siegen, 1604-1679, a humanist prince in Europe and Brazil, The Hague: Johan Maurits van Nassau Stichting, 1979, pp. 424-471, Whitehead (Peter James Palmer), “The biography of Georg Marcgraf (1610- 1643/4) by his brother Christian, translated by James Petiver,” Journal of the Society for the Bibliography of Natural History, vol. 9, no. 3, 1979, pp. 301-314; Whitehead (Peter James Palmer) & Boeseman (Marinus), A portrait of Dutch seventeenth century Brazil: Animals, plants and people by the artists of Johan Maurits of Nassau, New York: North-Holland pub. Co, 1989, 359 p. + [1] pl., ills.] Marcgrave’s works on astronomy, the principal object of his studies, were not so fortunate. Entrusted to Golius [Jacobus Golius, born at The Hague in 1596, died at Leiden in 1667], they have never appeared. There is reason to believe that he preceded the abbé de La Caille [Nicolas Louis La Caille, 1713-1762] in determining many of the southern stars.

26 In 1658 Piso published a new, greatly enlarged edition of his essay on the medicine of Brazil, under the title De Indiae utriusque re naturali et medica. Marcgrave’s work, which in the original edition followed that of Piso, no longer appears in this new edition except in excerpts incorporated into the body of Piso’s work, and Piso added his own observations and several new illustrations; but he also deleted much, so that now the one book does not take the place of the other. [Despite this use of Marcgrave’s work], it is hard to see how some writers could accuse Piso of plagiarism. On the contrary, he acknowledged Marcgrave at every turn in his two editions.

27 Jacques Bondt or Jacobius Bontius [born 1592], physician at the city of Batavia in 1625, died in 1631, was the author of a treatise titled Historiae naturalis et medicae Indiae Orientalis libri VI. It was printed in 1658 along with Piso’s second edition, a circumstance that determined the title of that edition [see note 25 above]. The purely medical part had already appeared in 1645 with the treatise by Prosper Alpinus [1553-1617], De medicina Aegyptiorum.

28 Johan Nieuhof, born [in 1618] at Bentheim in Westphalia, employed in various capacities by the Companies [East and West] of the Dutch Indies, and for some time governor of Ceylon, perished at Madagascar in 1672. His book [published posthumously under the direction of his brother Hendrik] titled Gedenkwaerdige zee- en lant-reize door de voornaemste landschappen van West en Oostindien, Amsterdam, 1682, in folio, contains thirty-eight drawings of fishes, most of them interesting [see the original Dutch edition, Nieuhof (Johan), Gedenkwaerdige zee- en lant-reize door de voornaemste landschappen van West en Oostindien. Zee en lant-reize door verscheide gewesten van Oostindien, behelzende veele zeltzaame en wonderlijke voorvallen en geschiedenissen, Amsterdam: Jacob van Meurs, 1682, pt 2, pp. 268-281; or an English translation of Nieuhof ’s voyages compiled by Churchill (Awnsham) & Churchill (John), Mr. John Nieuhoff ’s remarkable voyage & travells into ye best provinces of ye West and East Indies. In their A collection of voyages and travels, some now first printed from original manuscripts, others now first published in English. In six volumes. With a general preface, giving an account of the progress of navigation, from its first beginning. Illustrated with a great number of useful maps and cuts, curiously engraven, London: J. Walthoe, 1732, pp. 305-311]; copies of them are found at the end of Willughby’s [1686] plates.

29 Jean Baptiste du Tertre, Dominican monk, missionary to the Antilles, born at Calais in 1610 [died at Paris in 1687], composed a general natural history of the Antilles. The first edition was published in 1654, in one volume in quarto; the second, 1667-1671, three volumes in quarto, is much more complete.

30 [Charles de] Rochefort [1605-1683], Protestant minister at Rotterdam, borrowed from Du Tertre’s first edition the greater part of his Histoire naturelle et morale des îles Antilles de l’Amérique, Rotterdam, 1658, in quarto.

31 Pietro Andrea Mattioli, born at Sienna in 1501, physician at Rome, Trent, Gorizia, and Prague successively, died [of the plague] at Trent in 1577, is famous for his commentary on Dioscorides, printed first in Italian at Venice in 1544 and 1548 [the “Privilegio” is dated 1544], and in Latin in 1554 and 1565. This last edition, by [Vincenzo] Valgrisi, is the best: there are very handsome woodcuts of fishes, some of which, however, are taken from Salviani and from Rondelet. This work has been translated and reprinted many times. [For more on Mattioli, see Zanobio (Bruno), “Pietro Andrea Mattioli,” in Dictionary of scientific biography, New York: Scribner’s, 1974, vol. 9, pp. 178-180.]

32 Ferrante Imperato [1550-1625], Neapolitan physician, author of a natural history in Italian almost entirely about chemistry and mineralogy, printed first in 1599 in folio, then in 1610 in quarto [I have been unable to locate a copy of the 1610 edition], and at Venice in 1672. It contains references to a remora (écheneis) and an oarfish (gymnètre).

33 Fabius Columna [Fabio Colonna], born at Naples in 1567, his father an illegitimate son of Cardinal Pompeo Colonna, died in 1640, provides a drawing of an eagle ray (mylobate) in his “Naturalium rerum observations,” 1606. His “De glossopetris dissertatio,” published in 1752, contains interesting details on the teeth of sharks (squales).

34 Shark (squale) teeth were also an object of study for the Sicilian painter Agostino Scilla [1629-1700], in his work on petrification titled La vana speculazione disingannata dal senso, Naples, 1670, a small volume in quarto, of which there is a Latin translation titled De corporibus marinus lapidescentibus, Rome, 1752, in quarto. It contains, in addition, an illustration of a hammerhead shark (marteau) and another of a rare species of shark (squale) with seven gill openings [see Scilla (Agostino), La vana speculazione disingannata dal senso. Lettera risponsiua circa i corpi marini, che petrificati si trouano in varij luoghi terrestri. Di Agostino Scilla pittore accademico della Fucina, detto lo Scolorito…, Naples: Andrea Colicchia, 1670, pl. 28].

35 Caspar Schwenckfelt [1563-1609], physician at Hirschberg, had a natural history of animals of Silesia printed at Lignitz in 1603 in quarto titled Theriotropheum Silesiae, filled with good observations but without illustrations. The fifth book [pp. 377-456] treats of fishes and indicates several species, all fresh water.

36 Stephan von Schonevelde [died 1632] was a physician at Hamburg. His Ichthyologia et nomenclaturae animalium marinorum, fluviatilium, lacustrium, quae in Florentissimis ducatibus Slesvici et Holsatiae [… occurrunt…], Hamburg, 1624, in quarto, is accompanied by seven plates in which several species then new are fairly well represented.

37 Robert Sibbald [1641-1722], physician at Edinburgh, worked for twenty years on his Scotia illustrata, sive Prodromus historiae naturalis, Edinburgh, 1684, one volume in folio, in which there are a few mediocre illustrations of fishes. He also published a capital work on cetaceans [Sibbald (Robert), Phalainologia nova; sive Observationes de rarioribus quibusdam balaenis in Scotiae littus nuper ejectis: in quibus, nuper conspectae balaenae per genera et species, secundum characteres ab ipsa natura impressos, distribuuntur, Edinburgh; London: Joannis Redi & Benjamin White, 1773, [4] + 105 + [3] p., 3 pls], but this has nothing to do with our subject.

38 De harengo, exercitatio medica, in qua principis piscium exquisitissima bonitas summaque gloria asserta et vindicata by Paul Neucrantz [1605-1671], physician at Rostock, published at Lubeck, 1654, in-4°.