{"id":27710,"date":"2012-08-16T11:00:47","date_gmt":"2012-08-16T15:00:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nybg.org\/plant-talk\/?p=27710"},"modified":"2012-08-15T16:59:36","modified_gmt":"2012-08-15T20:59:36","slug":"from-the-library-strange-beasties-nova-plantarum","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nybg.org\/blogs\/plant-talk\/2012\/08\/from-the-library\/from-the-library-strange-beasties-nova-plantarum\/","title":{"rendered":"From the Library: Strange Beasties in Hern\u00e1ndez\u2019s Nova Plantarum, Animalium et Mineralium"},"content":{"rendered":"

While the NYBG<\/a>‘s Library is home to a wealth of rare botanical texts, we occasionally come into possession of something which explores taxonomy on a much broader level. Loosely translated from Latin, The New History of Plants, Animals and Minerals of<\/em> Mexico <\/em>is one such example, diving into seventeenth-century zoological studies with a certain flair.<\/p>\n

There are many inexplicable species drawings in Francisco Hern\u00e1ndez\u2019s pre-Linnaean work Nova plantarum, animalium et mineralium Mexicanorum historia<\/a><\/em> (1651), which was digitized<\/a> at The New York Botanical Garden\u2019s LuEsther T. Mertz Library<\/a> as part of its multiyear Global Plants Initiative project, generously funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In fact, in some cases, the animals depicted seem more inspired fantasy than scientific discovery. Take Dracunculus Monoceros<\/em>:<\/p>\n\"Dracunculus<\/a>\n

<\/p>\n

Another example might be this two-headed snake:<\/p>\n\"two-headed<\/a>\n

The phrase \u201cillvstriss. card. Barberini\u201d in the above Dracunculus <\/em>drawing refers to Cardinal Francesco Barberini<\/a>, friend to Galileo and member of Academy of Linceans<\/a>\u2014an organization founded in the seventeenth century to document and classify all of nature in pictorial form.<\/p>\n

Some inventions and inaccuracies in these early drawings might have had political or patronage causes that are addressed in part, for example, in the book The Eye of the Lynx: Galileo, His Friends, and the Beginnings of Modern Natural History<\/em> by David Freedberg<\/a>. (See a review here<\/a>.) Nevertheless, the illustrations themselves make for fascinating curiosities.<\/p>\n

Here are a \u201cMexican tiger\u201d and a \u201cMexican dog\u201d:<\/p>\n\"Tiger\"<\/a>\n\"Canis<\/a>\n

And a few more:<\/p>\n\"Puma\"<\/a>\n\"otter\"<\/a>\n\"Sheep\"<\/a>\n\"manatees\"<\/a>\n

The entire book is available online<\/a> at the Mertz Library digital collections<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Our collection of botanical texts occasionally yields taxonomic oddities.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":143,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false},"categories":[1346],"tags":[2731,2729,477,2733,2734,2730,2735,2736,2732],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/ph0lU-7cW","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nybg.org\/blogs\/plant-talk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27710"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nybg.org\/blogs\/plant-talk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nybg.org\/blogs\/plant-talk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nybg.org\/blogs\/plant-talk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/143"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nybg.org\/blogs\/plant-talk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27710"}],"version-history":[{"count":47,"href":"https:\/\/www.nybg.org\/blogs\/plant-talk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27710\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27829,"href":"https:\/\/www.nybg.org\/blogs\/plant-talk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27710\/revisions\/27829"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nybg.org\/blogs\/plant-talk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27710"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nybg.org\/blogs\/plant-talk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27710"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nybg.org\/blogs\/plant-talk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27710"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}