LIbrary Company volunteer, Ann Nista, illuminates the 17th Century naturalist Francis Willughby (1635-1672) through his posthumous publication De Historia Piscium (1686).

You can read more about his contribution to science HERE.

Willughby, Francis. De Historia Piscium.  Oxonii : e Theatro Sheldoniano, anno Dom. 1686.

“To give an accurate description of their shape is a thing impossible. Some  of them appear with horns that they bend to every shape; some seem to have but one leg and a tail, others seem to have three; some have bodies somewhat of the shape of a tadpole; others bear a distant resemblance to the porpoise; others exhibit the shape of a catfish with the head of a grass-hopper; others resemble nothing under the sun, but are wholly sui generis.” 

Magnified #PageFrights from The Book of Wonders (Boston, circa 1872).

The Book of wonders. : A strange, mysterious, and most wonderful publication. [Boston] : Published by F. Gleason & Co., 738 Washington Street, Boston, Mass., [not before 1872] 80 p. :  ill. ;  24 cm.

Moral of this story is that small things are cute. 

George Adams, Plates for the Essays on the Microscope (London, 1787).

Adams, a British instrument maker and optician, sold this book of plates, along with his telescopes, in his shop. Note the tiny circles, figure 2 and figure 4, which show the actual size of a bee’s proboscis.

This episode of Unfolding Fossils is brought to you by the Library Company of Philadelphia and the personal library of Sarah Mapps Douglass, a prominent African American abolitionist, gifted artist and educator.

Written by a female author, our copy of Familiar Lessons in Mineralogy and Geology… (Vol. II) includes this beautiful hand-colored fold-out showing impressions of leaves on various stones as well as layers of sedimentary rock. Douglass signs her name at the top of the title page signifying her ownership of the book.

Welsh, Jane Kilby. Familar lessons in mineralogy and geology… Vol. II. Boston : Clapp & Hull, 1833.