The Historia piscium opened with a clarification on the part of the authors regarding âwhat we understand under the name of Fishâ.1 John Ray explained that they were:
not ignorant of the fact that the name of Fish by some is extended as widely as possible to include all Aquatilia, both the ones which must be indicated as consisting of blood, and the bigger, bloodless ones, which Aristotle has divided in three genera, truly
μαλάκια or mollia [soft],μαλακÏÏ [Ï ]Ïακα or crustacea [with scales],ÏÏÏακοδεÏμα or testacea [covered with shells]. And indeed, our common people has all these for fish.2
He and his fellow author, the late Francis Willughby, however, departed from these definitions and introduced their own:
But we shall use in this work the word for fish in the stricter sense, only for those aquatic animals lacking feet, covered either in scales or smooth skin, swimming by means of fins, living constantly in water, never of its own volition coming out onto dry land, and scarcely able to survive out of the water.3
The principal aim of this work, the outcome of years of sustained study he and Willughby had undertaken, was to offer the reader accurate descriptions of all known species of fish. Having investigated plants, insects, birds and fish together, they came to the conclusion that in studying living nature, clear demarcations were vital. This entailed not only distinguishing fish from non-fish but also distinguishing one species from the other. And so they set out to put the study of natural history on a new, solid footing.
This chapter outlines the conceptual shift in seeing a fish as a creature that lives in the water (all aquatilia) to a creature without feet but with fins. Moreover, it examines this shift as it relates to the general changes of attitudes towards the study of nature seen as the sixteenth century moved into the seventeenth. To better understand Willughby and Rayâs ambitions, it is worth considering the aims and scope of early modern natural history that had been passed down from the sixteenth century. This chapter highlights some of the important developments. It argues that, in presenting themselves as reformers of natural history, Willughby and Ray drew up new definitions and articulated an empirical program for observing and categorising species â but that their work was in effect a learned empiricism, as it remained rooted in earlier traditions of natural history with regard to observation, description and illustration. The ideals they espoused regarding description and illustration in particular serve to emphasise these ambitions. In the attention they paid to the physical characteristics that demarcated hippopotami from pike and carps from sharks, Willughby and Ray transformed the study of fish not only by epistemologically separating them from the element in which they dwelled, but also by formulating clear markers of species.
1 Different Ways to Define a Fish
Even though Ray tended to distance himself from earlier authors in his writings, their works remained as sources of knowledge of which both he and Willughby had made ample use. It was more a question of emphasis. Aristotle and Pliny the Elder were among the traditional authorities they cited, attesting to the lasting influence of the classical canon.4 Engagement with these ancient works was, however, more of a critical act in the sixteenth century, as humanists became aware of the discrepancies between what they read in these texts and what they saw around them. While assertions of eye-witnessing had carried authority from antiquity, they took on new vigour in the early modern period.5 In the sixteenth century, a wide range of people â from artisans to anatomists and beyond â emphasised authority as derived from autopsia, or âseeing with oneâs own eyesâ.6 Towards the end of the seventeenth century, the term observatio became firmly established as the vocabulary of experience.7 Direct observation was now seen as a crucial tool for interpreting nature. This also had repercussions for how living beings were approached as a topic of study: no longer encapsulated in ancient texts that had been traditional sources of authority, they were now seen as possible proof for new philosophies that sought to reveal natureâs underlying patterns. The shifting definition of fish fits into this development.
What did the term aquatilia encompass? Pliny the Elder had used the term to denote aquatic animals, as a substantive adjective for that which was âliving, growing, or found, in or near waterâ.8 In the sixteenth century, the category of aquatilia encompassed all water-dwelling animals, from whales and rays to oysters, shrimp, crabs, turtles, walruses, octopuses (Figure 2) and so on. These are the species one encounters on the pages of, for instance, Belonâs De aquatilibus (Paris, 1551) and Salvianiâs Aquatilium animalium historiae (Rome, 1554â58).9 The title of Gessnerâs Historiae animalium liber IIII. qui est de piscium & aquatilium animantium natura (Zurich, 1558) mentions fish and aquatilia separately, but discussed them in one and the same work.10 The Latin term Gessner used, piscium, a declension from piscis (fish), was used in scholarly circles to refer to those aquatic animals with scales.11 But this usage was not universal. In his LâHistoire entière des poissons (Lyon, 1558), Rondelet included both âfish that do not have bloodâ (such as jellyfish) and âfish with hard shellsâ (scallops, for example).12 This use of the word fish corresponded to a broader tendency in early modern Europe for using the term for everything which lived either in, or on, the water.13 This brief exploration of the term underlines the anachronism implicit in only taking into account those species corresponding to our contemporary definition of fish in early modern natural histories of aquatic animals.
Watercolour of an octopus. Gessner-Platter Album, Hs. III C 22, 193
A defining feature of a fish, therefore, was that the creature dwelled in or on water. The correspondence between elements and animals was affirmed in Scripture: âAnd God said, let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.â14 Pliny the Elder had divided species according to whether they inhabited land, air or water;15 Aristotle had accorded the elements (earth, air, fire, water) a central place in his theories of matter.16 This elemental division continued to dictate daily life in the early modern period. The elements were thought to correspond to the changing seasons, the different ages of life, qualities (hot, dry, cold and moist) and humours (choler or yellow bile, blood, phlegm, and black bile). This may explain why, for sixteenth-century naturalists, aquatilia were considered a coherent group that merited treatment as such. Natural historical works on aquatilia of this period do indeed discuss the cold and moist properties of species, in keeping with the Galenic tradition, expounding at length on how these could either be beneficial or harmful depending on oneâs humoural constitution.17
As we saw in the opening of this chapter, Willughby and Ray defined âfishâ in a stricter, narrower sense than Gessner and other earlier Renaissance naturalists had done. While this definition of a fish is notably different from ours today, as it included species that we now categorise as sea mammals, such as whales and porpoises, their definition entailed a new approach to defining what a fish actually was (and what it was not). In a letter to Robinson in 1684, Ray furthermore explained that â[e]xanguia aquatica I account rather insects than fishes.â18 These exanguia aquatica or âbloodless aquatic creaturesâ included the shellfish and molluscs that, as we have seen, were counted among fish by other authors. For Willughby and Ray, what made a fish a fish was thus not that it swam in the water, but that it displayed specific physical characteristics.
Some decades before the Historia piscium was published, the philosopher and mathematician René Descartes (1596â1650) hypothesised that nature was not structured from the four elements, but from small particles that clashed and collided with one another.â He wished to explode the Aristotelian system and replace it by his own, mechanist oneâ .19 In his Principia philosophiae (Amsterdam, 1644), Descartes offered a new metaphysical framework for the study of planetary and celestial motions, the inner structures of the earth, as well as the physiologies of plants and animals.20 All creatures could be studied on a par with one another, with every creature relegated to the same ontological status, viz. that of a machine that was structured and governed by the fixed laws of nature.21â One could understand the working of these laws through a close examination of a flea, a flounder or a falcon â it did not matter, for they were all made of the same matter that followed the same laws. By implication, the erstwhile organisation of animals into elemental realms lost its relevance. Although Willughby and Ray did not make the philosophical underpinnings of their new definition explicit, they were well aware of Descartesâ ideas. Willughby dedicated several pages of notes to Cartesian philosophy in his commonplace book, while Ray purchased a copy of the Principia philosophiae.22
Rayâs treatment of the spawning of fish neatly embodies one pressing topic in which classical notions failed to match the new philosophies: that of procreation. He summarised how Aristotle had rightly discerned three different types of fish, each of which had their own mode of propagation: first, the cetaceans that reproduced in the same manner as mammals did, by giving birth to live young and were thus viviparous; second, the cartilaginous fish that were ovo-viviparous, hatching eggs in their own body, and then bringing forth live young; and, lastly, the spiny fish that were oviparous, which meant that the females laid eggs (called roe) which were then fertilised by the milt (seminal fluid) of males.23 Ray also cited Aristotleâs idea that some species of fish were neither oviparous nor viviparous, generating spontaneously from mud, sand or foam.24 The theory of spontaneous generation was broadly agreed upon by sixteenth-century naturalists. Rondelet even made matters more complex by contending that the carpâs procreative habits were ambiguous, as it could sometimes proceed from eggs, and at other times from mud and sand.25
By the second half of the seventeenth century, however, this assumption had become more problematic. On the one hand, spontaneous generation accorded with the everyday experience of seeing living beings emerge from lifeless matter, like worms that appeared in rotten food. On the other hand, the element of chance that this process entailed seemed to elide the fixed laws of nature as postulated by Descartes.26 Naturalists began to seek explanations that rendered the process of generation regular and predictable. Ray included these explanations into his discussion, like the claim of William Harvey (1578â1657) that all living beings came from eggs.27 He tellingly closed his discussion with a reference to the findings of a certain âD. Levenhoeckâ, who had observed animalculorum [literally: little animals, spermatozoa] in the seminal fluid of fish.28 This was, of course, the Delft cloth merchant Antoni van Leeuwenhoek (1632â1723), who had been corresponding with the Fellows of the Royal Society since 1673 and sent them drawings of what he observed through his lenses.29 He took a keen interest in the procreation of underwater creatures, even the smallest ones, examining the seed of pike, cod and oysters (sourced from local fishermen) under his microscope.30 Ray admitted that the matter of spontaneous generation remained a difficult question, but it is clear that he followed the discussion closely.31
By the later seventeenth century, ancient works had been largely superseded by contemporary ones, and classical claims were no longer at the forefront of research agendas.32â New philosophies challenged hitherto widely accepted views on the governing structures of nature. The hierarchical view of nature gradually gave way to a more mechanist one, in which the anatomy and physiology of each and every animal was governed by the same natural laws. Salient in this regard is how the definition of fish given in the Historia piscium, when compared to those earlier books on which it drew, relied on its physical characteristics (namely, having fins and lacking feet), rather than on its surroundings (namely, living in the water). We will now turn to examine the Historia piscium in more detail, from its earliest inceptions to its published form.
2 âUseful Studies and Designsâ
When Willughby passed away after a short illness in 1672, his death came in the midst of âthe hot pursuit of useful studies and designsâ, as Ray put it.33 Willughby had been a polymath, well versed not only in Cartesian philosophy, mathematics, chymystry and magnetism, but also in the study of plants, four-footed beasts, birds and fish.34 In Ray he had found a kindred spirit. Ray tutored in Greek and mathematics, but came to prefer the study of natural history, which he considered as a perfect entry into contemplating Godâs endless wisdom.35 Both men immersed themselves in various branches of learning, and their interests stretched from the movement of the heavens to classical languages, to fish.
The basis for the collaboration of Willughby and Ray was formed at the University of Cambridge. In 1644, Ray had been admitted to Trinity College on a stipend. After completing his degree, he stayed on as a lecturer and tutor, first of Greek and later in mathematics. During this time, he developed a botanical interest, cataloguing the plants in the vicinity of Cambridge, and cultivating them in his garden.36 Willughby, who came from a noble family, arrived at Trinity in 1652.37 He enrolled in the undergraduate arts course, and although it was uncommon for gentlemen to stay at the university for an extended period of time, he went on to take a Master of Arts, all the while cultivating a particular interest in natural philosophy and natural history. It was likely in this context that he got to know Ray better; the latterâs Catalogus plantarum circa Cantabrigiam nascentium (Cambridge, 1660) mentions him as a contributor.38
In the early 1660s, both Willughby and Ray departed from Cambridge.39 They continued to meet fellow scholars at Londonâs Royal Society for the improving of natural knowledge in London. This had been established in 1660 under a charter of King Charles II (1630â1685) and foregrounded direct experience as the foundation for acquiring knowledge about nature. Given their sustained interest in studying the natural world, Willughby and Ray seemed suitable members, and they knew several of the other Fellows from their days at Cambridge. The Societyâs meetings offered a congenial setting for men of certain standing interested in natural philosophy to exchange thoughts, ideas, and occasionally to perform experiments.40
Their approach is often seen as explicitly empirical; the Societyâs motto, nullius in verba (on the word of no one), reflects the commitment of the Fellows to questioning received wisdom, and to examining everything with their own eyes.41 The chronicler of the early Royal Society, Thomas Sprat (1635â1713) wrote that the Fellows took: â[â¦] as their Fundamental Law, that whenever they could possibly get to handle the subject, the Experiment was still performâd by some of the Members themselves.â42 They collected many observations on a wide range of topics from which they hoped to distil general natural principles. In this, the Society owed much to the philosophical programme of Francis Bacon (1561â1626), even if its adherence to the latterâs work was not absolute. Chapter 2 will delve into the historiography surrounding the Royal Society in much more detail than the present chapter allows, and look at its empirical project in more depth.
Willughby and Ray spent the larger part of this decade travelling. During their time at Cambridge, they made several trips within England and Wales collecting observations of plants, birds and fish as well as compiling lists of words in several dialects.43 Between 1663 and 1666, Willughby and Ray toured continental Europe with fellow Cantabrigians Nathaniel Bacon (1647â1676) and Philip Skippon (1641â1691) as well as two servants. After having reached Calais, the company set course to the Low Countries, from where they travelled through Germany, Switzerland, and Austria to the Italian Peninsula â after which the company returned home.44 Rayâs and Skipponâs travel accounts demonstrate the groupâs devotion to recording everything they encountered, a devotion remarkable in its intensity, attention to detail and scope.45 Alongside animals and plants, the naturalists documented inscriptions on buildings and local customs. Skippon wrote, for example, that during their visit to Rome, they had climbed Trajanâs Column, noting that it comprised 173 steps.46 With this, they proved that the humanist scholar Alfonso Chacón (1530â1599) statement that the column had 184 steps as incorrect.47 While this example might seem trivial, it is exemplary of their insistence on holding their own direct observations against the reports of earlier authors.
Their travels both within the British Isles and on the Continent were important opportunities for the examination of nature. In Wales and the West Country, for example, they described birds, fishes and plants as well as visiting mines.48 On the Continent, they visited the cabinet of curiosities of the late Felix Platter (1536â1614) in Basel.49 They saw a â[â¦] collection of rarities; among which [â¦] many sorts of minerals, stones, dryâd fishes, &c. with their names written; a lamp with a brass globe, which, turned any way, would still keep in its right posture; lachrymal urns; painted books of quadrupeds, fishes and fowls; [â¦].â50 It was in the natural historical specimens in such collections that Willughby and Ray also caught glimpses of species not native to Europe. They could make use, for example, of the Royal Societyâs Repository, which had drawn âtogether in one Room, the greatest part of all the several kinds of things, that are scatterâd throughout the Universe.â51 The catalogue that natural historian and Fellow of the Royal Society Nehemiah Grew (1641â1712) drew up of this collection gives an idea of its contents, ranging from coins to âhumane raritiesâ and to animals, plants and minerals.52
Upon returning to England, Ray was invited to take up residence at the Willughby familyâs estate, Middleton Hall in Warwickshire.53 This meant that they could all the more easily pursue their shared and ambitious goal: to identify and describe all the species of plants, birds, fish and insects they had come across, and to put them into some sort of order. This arrangement continued until Willughbyâs premature death in 1672. Ray continued his work, turning the extensive notes he and Willughby had produced into actual natural historical manuscripts that were fit for print.54
In 1685, more than ten years after Ray had commenced his preparation of the history of fishes, the Royal Society received word that it was almost ready. As is the case for the Ornithologia, the book that Willughby and Ray delivered on birds, the Historia piscium displays Willughbyâs name on its title page as the author.55 Ray, who had assembled the existing materials, supplementing them where necessary, was credited as the workâs editor. The state of the work at the moment of Willughbyâs death and the decade it took Ray to convert their notes into something publishable has led to much debate regarding which of the two men ought truly be considered the bookâs author.56 In his biography of Ray, Charles Raven more than once contends that the contributions of the younger, less experienced Willughby to their natural historical researches could only have been minor.57 Two recent publications that focus solely on Willughby have done much to bring to light the latterâs significant role in the duoâs fruitful cooperation.58 Their contributions can, to some extent, be teased apart. The Historia piscium contains a few passages where Ray explicitly attributes a certain statement to Willughby, and the title page specifies that the first two parts of their publication came from Rayâs hand. On the whole, the history of fishes is best considered as a collaborative project to which Fellows other than its prime movers, Willughby and Ray, also contributed.
The most thorough study of the Historia piscium, both with regard to its intellectual underpinnings and the more practical side of publication, has been undertaken by Sachiko Kusukawa.59 As Kusukawa has stated, the Fellowsâ collective engagement with the work fundamentally shaped the way it was finally published.60 The Royal Society became involved in the production of the work after they had found that Ray wanted to supply it with illustrations, as he had done for the Ornithologia. It proved difficult to find a printer willing to publish such a work because of the high costs involved. Eager to see the work in print, the Society assumed financial responsibility for its publication,61 having previous experience in licensing and sponsoring books.62 The Societyâs involvement was not just of financial nature: the Fellows helped to amass relevant material for the book and evaluated which observations merited inclusion. They also passed down their own observations.63 Tancred Robinson (1658â1748) and Martin Lister (1639â1712) were especially active in delivering the Historia piscium to publication.64
When the book finally made it into print in 1686, it comprised four parts. It opened with general discussion of fish and their properties, continued with descriptions of cetaceans (whales and the like), descriptions of fish with cartilaginous skeletons (for example, rays and sharks), and lastly with descriptions of fish that had bony skeletons and spiny fins, like herrings and trouts, which made up the largest group. As will be dicussed in more detail below, such distinctions harked back to Aristotle, who Willughby explained had rightly grouped fishes into cetacei (whales), cartilaginei (cartilaginous fish) and spinosi (bony fish).65 The appendix of the book contained descriptions of fish found in other books that were not considered precise enough to warrant inclusion in the body text.66 The resulting work was a voluminous and impressive work in folio format.
In addition to its well over 300 pages of text, Historia piscium contained 189 sumptuous, often full-page, copperplate engravings, depicting no fewer than 388 species. The book was, in fact, originally envisioned as two separate works: one work containing texts, and the other (which was to bear the name Icthyographia) illustrations. While the works were eventually published together as one book, both parts retained their own title page. In most copies of the Historia piscium the illustrations are bound together, rather than being interleaved between the descriptions.67 Because copper plates were expensive, Fellows and other donors subscribed to them; their names are inscribed on the plates. This brought down the cost by almost £163, a sum that did not match the final production cost of £360, which included the commissions to the engravers, the cost of the paper, and the printing of index and text.68 One could purchase a copy for a little over £1 on a lesser quality paper if one had subscribed, or spend £1 and 8 shilling for the best paper if one had not.69 Sales, however, proved disappointing and the Society suffered a considerable loss. Publishing books was often a risky affair, but its many engravings made the Historia piscium a particularly delicate enterprise.70 Its publication turned out to be such a costly venture that the Society famously did not have sufficient funds left with which to finance the publication of Isaac Newtonâs Philosophiae naturalis principia mathematica.71
Those today who are surprised that a book of fish almost sank Newtonâs Principia, besides having the gift of hindsight, overlook the fact that a natural history of fish fitted snugly within the Royal Societyâs explicit programme. After all, the Fellows were invested in bringing together observations on a wide range of topics; Robert Hooke (1635â1703) insisted that attention should be paid to common things.72 The minutes of the Societyâs meetings certainly reflect their investment in recording a wide range of phenomena in detail: from the workings of quicksilver to the colour variants of the teeth of sheep.73 The communications that were published in the Philosophical Transactions do likewise.74 In short, in their shared, âhot pursuitâ of useful studies, the Fellows did not regard scrutinising plants, birds, fish and insects in all their intricacies as an endeavour intrinsically less worthwhile than studying the motions of planets.
3 Formats for Description
In the epilogue of the history of fishes, Ray explained that it was not meant as comprehensive account of everything that had ever been written about all fish. That, he stated, had already been done by the great Gessner.75 Instead, they included only those observations made by themselves, their friends, and other trustworthy witnesses. Through careful observations, they sought to set right the multiplication of species that earlier authors of natural history had caused by describing two or three species where there had, in fact, only been one. In keeping with their ambition to offer a clear demarcation of species they designed the bookâs species descriptions to facilitate easy identification. Their new approach to description hinged on a clear (though not exclusive) focus on the physical characteristics of a species put forth in a structured manner, and eschewed the cultural or literary context of the species at hand.
Description had been an important part of historia naturalis since its inception, but truly became a topic of concern in the sixteenth century.76 Naturalists were confronted with the need to draw up species descriptions in such a way that it would be clear to their correspondents as well as the readers of their books precisely what they had seen. They examined plants and animals for differences [differentiae] in areas such as the shape or placement of leaves or petals, through which one species could be distinguished from another. These physical descriptions were usually combined with excerpts from literature, poetry, proverbs, myths, fables and emblems in which the species at hand figured â in short, its cultural context.77 This web of associations helped to make sense of the species and its place in the world.
Renaissance authors used various principles for grouping species. Species descriptions could be sequenced based on medicinal uses, habitat â Rondelet, for example, sorted fishes according to whether they swam in the sea, in rivers, in lakes or in marshes â or whether species were common or rare.78 Other categorisations were based on morphological and physiological characteristics, and more closely resemble contemporary ideas of taxonomy.79 Gessner, for example, sorted physically similar species of fish into groups, such as âtrout-likeâ species which, among others features, shared an adipose fin.80 The Swiss naturalist also explained how one might tell one species from another. In the group of âherring-likeâ fish, for example, the sardine could be distinguished from the herring because, while they might look much alike, the former was smaller.81 The order in which he discussed all species throughout his Historia animalium was alphabetical:â the trout- and herring-like species were not placed in proximity to one another on the pages of his work. To compare morphologically similar species the reader had to browse back and forth through the book. In his Nomenclator aquatilium animantium of 1560, Gessner forewent the alphabetical arrangement used in his Historia animalium. He first sorted fish into marine and fresh water species and then into categories based on physical properties, such as whether they were scaly, broad and flat or cartilaginous and long, echoing Aristotle.82 It is indicative of how, in their publications, Renaissance naturalists drew on different ordering principles, either environmental (marine or fresh water) or morphological features (shape and skeletal structure) â or a combination of these.
As mentioned, Willughby and Rayâs Historia piscium also adhered to the three overarching groups that Aristotle had established for the finny tribe: cetaceans, cartilaginous fish, and spiny fish, each of which were relegated to their own part of the Historia piscium. The cartilaginous fish was further split it in different subgroups largely based on shape (e.g., whether a species was long, flat, thick or thin).83 These groups were, in turn, divided into smaller groups according, for example, whether or not they had teeth.84â In their categorisation of spiny fish, shape again played a role, as did characteristics such as the number of dorsal fins and whether or not the rays in the fins were soft or thorny.85 All species descriptions were sequenced according to this order. Although the book does arrange species into groups, their demarcations are relatively loose and ought not be confused with the three-tiered taxonomical hierarchy of order, genus and species that later naturalists established as will be discussed in Chapter 3.
It was the species themselves that were the prime concern for Willughby and Ray.86 By observing species with scrupulous attention to detail, they aimed to uncover the âtrueâ (viz. God given) arrangement of species. The great multitude of species, Ray argued, had been made to âmanifest and display the Riches of the Power and Wisdom of God.â87 As he contended in the preface to the Ornithology, earlier descriptions of birds had been âin many particulars confused and obscrue [obscure]â,88 but naturalists could dispel the confusion and multiplications of species by establishing âcharacteristic marksâ [notae characteristicae] on the basis of which species could be demarcated.89 With their concern for characteristic marks, Willughby and Ray ensured that âthe Reader might be sure of our meaning, and upon comparing any Bird with our description not fail discerning whether it be the described or no.â90 For fish, the characteristic marks might be the number and position of fins, certain spots or colours, or other properties â as long as these properties could be inferred from the actual specimen itself. Take, for instance, the sharks. They were discussed in the third part (on cartilaginous fish) and placed under the header of âlong and cartilaginousâ fish.91 In this group, the tope shark could be discerned from the similarly looking smooth hound shark by its larger size, its rows of sharp teeth and its eyes, the irises of which were of a brighter, silver colour.92
Their species descriptions follow the same general format. Having given the name(s) of the species at hand, they dived right into detailed descriptions of the outer and inner parts of the fish. Topics covered included, among other things, the size of the fish, its shape, colour, its head, its teeth, its scales, and its fins. In quite a few instances, they offered the measurements of a specimen, or wrote down the number of teeth or fin rays that they counted from it â a practice that, as we will see in the following chapters, would gain considerable currency among later naturalists. Willughby and Ray did not stop short of describing physical properties and made the occasional remark on the degustatory qualities of fish, commending the flesh of the herring, for example, as fat, soft and delightful.93 In order to guide the reader through all these minute descriptions, key words were printed in the margin of the species descriptions which signalled the topic under discussion in the adjacent text: from the manner in which a species procreated to a description of its spleen.94
In describing the inner parts of fish, writers could take recourse to the accounts published by sixteenth-century naturalists, who routinely dissected animals.95 Rondelet in particular, with his background in comparative anatomy, was known for performing dissections of fish, and Willughby and Rayâs Historia piscium often cites him on these.96 But, in keeping with the authoritative weight attached to an autopsy, Willughby and Ray would cut open specimens themselves if they had the chance. Their travels gave them ample chance to do so, possibly in the comfort of their lodgings.97 A unique insight into this process is offered by a set of four drawings in the Middleton collection in Nottingham which show the step-by-step dissection of a male flair (a species of ray) that took place under the auspices of their travel companion Philip Skippon; the images are inscribed with Skipponâs notes.98 The first image shows the contours of the flair drawn with lead.99 The emphasis, however, is on the flap of skin that has been folded open to show the fishâs insides. For this part, drawing ink is used â making it clear what part of the image is background and what is foreground. As the marginalia indicate, the flairâs gallbladder has been made visible by removing the liver. In what is presumably the final image in this series (Figure 3), the skin of different parts of the body has been sliced open, its thorax and various organs laid bare. The heart might have been revealed, Skippon noted, were it not for the fact that the âworkmanâ, Mr Okely, grew tired and wished to finish the drawing and hand it over.100 The precise recording of this process, though subject to limitations of stamina, is illustrative of the care taken to examine and document fish.
Drawing of a dissected flair. NUL, Mi LM 25/14, University of Nottingham Library Manuscripts and Special Collections
For all this, Willughby and Ray had different ideas on precisely how much detail was desirable when compiling a species description. That the formerâs painstaking descriptions of the plumage colours of birds were met with some apprehension by the latter becomes clear from this passage:
I must confess that in describing the colours of each single feather he [Willughby] sometimes seems to me to be too scrupulous and particular, partly because Nature doth not in all Individuals, (perhaps not in any two) observe exactly the same spots or strokes, partly because it is very difficult so to word descriptions of this sort as to render them intelligible.101
Here, Ray commented on the expedience of tending so much to individual varieties rather than species. He also touched upon the difficulties of putting different shades of colour into words. On this matter, Kusukawa relates a species description in the Historia piscium in which Ray considered a certain species of plaice to be of âan unripe olive colourâ, whereas to Willughbyâs eyes it seemed more of a brown-greyish colour tending to blue.102 The discussion of colourisation was a salient one. First of all, because the colours of fish were, indeed, a complicated matter; they might vary according to a fishâs age or the season, and usually disappeared once the fish had died.
For Willughby and Ray, therefore, a proper species description was one that referred to one particular species unambiguously. Where sixteenth-century naturalists had described species by placing them in a philological context, combined with accounts of their physiological aspects, such lengthy, encyclopedic descriptions were less appropriate for Willughby and Rayâs purposes. They centered their descriptions around clearly established characteristic marks and only seldom incorporated the cultural context of a species, strictly disavowing interpretations of species of plants and animals as signs and allegories.103 They sought to establish an unambiguous differentiation between species as well as to understand how these were morphologically interlinked.104
4 The Best Figures
Illustrations were another opportunity for Willughby, Ray and the Fellows to emphasise their empirical program. Images, contrary to common parlance, did not speak for themselves, but required interpretation and assessment. This is clear from the debates that erupted while policy and practice regarding the inclusion of figures in the Historia piscium were decided upon.
These illustrations display considerable diversity in terms of design. They were culled from a wide range of sources: about two thirds of them were taken from earlier printed works, while the rest were designated as ânewâ and marked with a dagger.105 The designation of ânewâ may not have indicated much more than that they were newly-acquired, and this could mean they were copied from newly-purchased manuscripts, drawn from specimens in the Societyâs Repository, or perhaps had recently been received by a Fellow from a personal contact.106 Though expensive, Ray probably considered these engravings to be worth every penny. When preparing his book of plants for publication, Ray had asserted that for such a history to lack images would be as remiss as producing an atlas without maps.107 That images were sources of knowledge on a par with texts has been pointed out by Kusukawa, who has noted Ray treated âtextual description and visual illustration as equally referring to a possibly real fish.â108 For the authors of the Historia piscium, illustrations were important sources of knowledge and thus an important component of its output.
When the Historia piscium was being prepared for print, the selection of suitable illustrations caused consternation. At the meeting of 18 March 1685 (OS), a letter from Ray to Robinson was read aloud which stated that âwith respect to the designs for the cuts, he [Ray] said, that he had several drawn from life, and had made references to the places in authors, where the best figures were extant.â109 This report was not received well. On the very same day the meeting was held, Robert Plot (1640â1696) had penned a response to Francis Aston (1645â1715), who had written him on the matter. During the following meeting, on 25 March 1685 (OS), Plotâs response was shared, which suggested that Rayâs statement had âmuch lessened the opinion concerning that historyâ.110 It had been presumed by the Society that all the draughts would be taken âfrom the life, where as it was now found, that the cuts must be picked up here and there out of booksâ.111 Now that doubt had been cast on the quality of the illustrations, the intended printer John Fell (1625â1686), who besides being the bishop of Oxford founded the University Press, was hesitant to go ahead with publication.112 He was not willing to commit to publishing the work âtill he had seen what it was; and that therefore those draughts, which were ready, should be sent thitherâ.113
An intervention was required. As the Royal Society had decided to finance the work, they set up a committee to oversee the printing process and subject it to quality control. This committee consisted of several Fellows and included Lister, Robinson and Aston, as well as Ray himself.114 Under the adage that he who pays the piper, calls the tune, the assembling and evaluating of illustrations became a collective project of the Society.115 When the Fellows found out, for example, that Henry Hunt (d.1713) possessed some of the illustrations of birds and fish made by bishop of Chester John Wilkins (1614â1672), he was âordered to get the plates of the fishes rolled off against the next meeting, in order that the Society might judge, whether they would be useful to this book.â116 The debate on suitable drawings for the Historia piscium suggests there was no consensus among the Royal Society members with regard to what constituted an epistemologically sound image. Furthermore, these kinds of back and forths between the Fellows not only signal the weight attached to selecting proper illustrations, but also invite reflection on what options they had.
Illustrations played a considerable yet not necessarily clear-cut role in the early Royal Society. Study of the Fellowsâ visual practices shows that they valued images for communicating, claiming, and proving observations, ideas and theories; and that they took care to copy and preserve illustrations in their own archives, although they did not include every single drawing or graph.117 In certain instances, they held animus against images; the aforementioned Hooke, who authored a sumptuously illustrated book on microscopic entities, approached images with some wariness as he felt that they could sway the passions and cloud the intellect.118 All in all, there was not one clear, overarching epistemological programme for images on the part of the Society, and one ought not ascribe too much coherence to the Fellowsâ approaches towards illustrations.119
As the Fellows had feared, a fair share of the illustrations in the Historia piscium were copied from the books of Aldrovandi, Belon, Gessner, Rondelet and Salviani. The copying of images from other books was itself a well-established practice. Although it can be difficult to reconstruct such fililations with absolute certainty, it is clear that early modern authors generally drew upon each otherâs illustrations, just as they drew upon each otherâs texts.120 Take for example the image of the sea serpent in Belonâs book on aquatic animals (1553) that depicts it coiled as if it were a rope. A very similar image of the same species can be found in Salvianiâs work published a year later; while it is not an exact copy (especially in the design of the head), it nonetheless corresponds to it in specific details. Comparably coiled, it has the same curl in the tail and an open mouth showing its teeth. A few years later, Gessnerâs 1558 book displays an image unmistakeably similar to that of Salviani, albeit with some slight variations in the teeth. Lastly, the depiction of the sea serpent in the Historia piscium shows clear resemblance to Salviani and is captioned with âSerpens marinus Salvianiâ, which, as said, was also similar to the serpent depicted in Belon.121 This cursory comparison shows that natural historical images were quite freely copied and adapted.122
With the exception of Salviani, the abovementioned authors used woodcuts, the standard medium in the sixteenth century for the production of images. Salviani deployed engravings, a form of intaglio printing in which lines were incised on metal plates (often of copper).123 While this technique had been in use since the fifteenth century, it was not always the preferred option due to its high cost and because it meant that illustrations had to be printed separately from the text.124 The advantage of intaglio printing was resolution, however, and while some artists had the skill to work very fine detail into woodcuts, copper engravings generally lent themselves to more precise depiction. This is perhaps why the Fellows preferred them: they used almost three quarters of Salvianiâs engravings.125 For the Historia piscium, all the illustrations, either copied or designed afresh, were engraved on plates. In this, the printer Fell advised that only one hand should be employed to ensure stylistic consistency.126 This advice was not heeded; it appears that no less than eighteen engravers were commissioned.127 While we now know the names of a considerable number of these engravers, this is not the case for the artists who made the initial drawings.
Although Willughby and Ray were careful to put the exact colour of birds and fish in writing, the engravings in the Ornithologia and the Historia piscium appeared without colour.128 It was, at this time, possible but not necessarily common to have copies of natural historical works coloured in the workshop of a printer, where colourists often worked from a master copy. This could, however, be tricky; Gessner, for example, pointed out that the colourists employed by the publisher for his Historia animalium had carried out their task all too carelessly.129 The colourisation of engravings, which might be done either before or after purchase, added a considerable additional expense on the part of the buyer.
When Ray announced that some of the drawings for the book were taken from life, Plot contended that all of them should have been. The multivalent meaning of the phrase âfrom the lifeâ (and its Latin cognate ad vivum as well as counterparts in other languages) has been amply discussed in the last years by art historians and historians of science alike.130 Kusukawa has noted that one should be careful to attach too much coherence to the ways in which this term was used. It did not necessarily imply that the artists had any direct experience with the object they portrayed.131 In fact, the qualification of âad vivumâ by no means confirmed the existence of the thing that was depicted.132 It could mean, rather, that a certain object was painted as lifelike enough to evoke in the spectator the idea that the thing was really there.133 It could also serve as in indication of an intention on behalf of the artist to have rendered the animal or plant as accurately as possible.134 None of the plates in the Historia piscium carry an inscription stating that they were done âfrom the lifeâ; we have seen, however, that Ray did distinguish between images that were done âfrom the lifeâ and those that had been copied from books.
The ambiguity of the qualification âfrom the lifeâ can be illustrated by a species of pufferfish described and depicted in Historia piscium. It concerns the Guamaica atinga, as it was called by the Tupi people of the coastal regions of Brazil. Neither Willughby nor Ray had ever seen the species alive. They had taken the species description from the Historia naturalis Brasiliae (Amsterdam, 1648), the natural historical work of Georg Marcgraf (1610â1644) and Willem Piso (1611â1678).135 These authors had travelled through the north-eastern provinces of Brazil in the service of Johan Maurits van Nassau-Siegen (1604â1679), who had been made the governor-general of this Dutch colony in 1636.136 Many woodcuts from their work were used in the Historia piscium. In the case of the Guamaica atinga, however, rather than simply copying the published woodcut that was based on an in situ drawing in Brazil, a drawing was designed afresh.
This drawing (Figure 4), which is among the Willughby legacy, was one of those made from a specimen in the Royal Societyâs Repository.137 It was one among the six specimens in the Repository that were drawn and engraved for the Historia piscium.138 The pufferfish was drawn from the life, in the sense that the artist based the drawing from direct access to the specimen at hand, rather than copying an earlier illustration. By including the shadow cast by the pufferfish onto the paper, the artist directs attention to both his own physical presence and that of the specimen. The image thus employs a ârhetoric of the real.â139 Obviously, the specimen was no longer alive at this point. The illustrations in the Historia naturalis Brasiliae were explicitly declared ad vivum in the dedication of the work, though what this entails is not made explicit.140
Drawing of a pufferfish specimen from Royal Society Repository. NUL, Mi LM 25/21, University of Nottingham Library Manuscripts and Special Collections
In describing species, characteristic marks were key to Willughby and Ray, and this emphasis manifested itself in the bookâs illustrations. First of all, most of the depicted fish species are shown from a side elevation, to borrow an architectural term â with the obvious exception of rays and flatfishes, where often both the upper and lower surfaces are shown. This angle of depiction best conveys the morphological characters of fish pertinent for identification and categorisation, such as their overall shape and their fins. Furthermore, they are depicted according to what Janice Neri has dubbed âspecimen logicâ, where objects are taken from their context and placed within the blank space of a page.141 Both showing fishes from the side and placing them against a white background are common depictive strategies in natural historical works from the sixteenth through to the nineteenth centuries. That did not mean, however, that all characteristic marks were necessarily rendered visible. In the earlier discussion of the differences between the tope shark and smooth hound shark, it was shown how these related to the colour of the irises, their teeth, and their size. None of these features can be inferred from the respective illustrations in the Historia piscium, for none of these depictions convey the colour, inner anatomies, or size of their depicted species (Figure 5a/b).142 The illustrations were thus not in themselves always sufficient to enable species to be told apart.
Engraving of a smooth hound shark. Francis Willughby and John Ray, Historia piscium (Oxford: Sheldonian Theatre, 1686), tab B5
Engraving of a tope shark. Francis Willughby and John Ray, Historia piscium (Oxford: Sheldonian Theatre, 1686), tab B6
Utrecht University Library
For Ray, images were nonetheless important because they conveyed knowledge with ease and pleasure.143 He was certainly pleased with how the illustrations in the Historia piscium turned out, as he praised their veracity.144 At the same time, representations were mediations, as the compilers of the Historia piscium were also aware. Authors did not exercise complete control over the process of illustration.145 It involved many people, from draftsmen to block-cutters or engravers, and printers and colourists. The drawings for the Historia piscium of fishes were selected on a case-by-case basis. In this selection process, we recognise the decisions made by sixteenth-century naturalists who had drawings made from life, but who also used images that were sent to them, or copied figures from elsewhere. In fact, a share of these images were copied into the Historia piscium. Images that were engraved anew often incorporated new pictorial conventions such as the inclusion of shadows to suggest proximity to the object at hand. The question of what were the âbest figuresâ, in Rayâs words, thus had pragmatic answers that were a function of a plethora of factors such as the qualities of the artists, depiction strategies and conventions, and technological possibilities.
5 Conclusion
In the Historia piscium, Willughby and Ray defined their subject matter differently than authors had done before them: both with regard to what a fish was (i.e., an animal with fins rather than any creature that dwelled in the water), and as to how species should be described and categorised. Natural history of the sixteenth century was characterised by an encyclopaedic approach to studying nature, one bent upon knowing and describing the particular properties of species of plants and animals based on a wide range of sources, from cookery books and literary works to medicinal treatises. Willughby and Ray, in seeking to reform the study of nature, explicitly bade farewell to this humanistic research tradition, propagating instead a strict focus on describing morphological features of fish through direct observation.
And yet, the book retained a compilatory character, as Willughby, Ray and the Fellows combed through material from a wide range of sources, from earlier books and travel accounts, to loose drawings, and observations communicated in letters. The debates surrounding species descriptions (Willughby and Ray) and illustrations (Ray and the rest of the Fellows) demonstrate how idealistic choices also had to be pragmatic. Willughby, Ray and the other Fellows were very much reliant on the observations and experiences of others. Studying nature entailed different degrees of observation, as one could see the specimen itself, either dead or alive, or peruse an illustration, read a description, or hear it reported from someone. Fellows thus had to continually evaluate which observations were worthwhile and trustworthy, and which were not. The following chapter will expand on this idea and foreground questions of reliability and credibility. It centres on the ideals of empirical observation as espoused by the Royal Society in general and the Historia piscium more specifically, and looks at how these related to the experiences of fishermen and fishmongers. It takes us to the shops, the ports and the fish markets.
âQuid Piscis nomine intellegimusâ, Hist. pisc., 1.
âNon sum nescius Piscis nomen à nonnullis quam latissime extendi ad Aquatilia omnia significanda tam sanguinea, quam exanguia majora, quae Aristoteles in tria genera dividit, nimirum
âVerum nos in hoc opere restrictiore acceptione voce piscis utemur, pro iis tantum aquatilibus, quae & sanguinae sunt, & pinnis natant, & pedibus carent, & in aquis perpetuo degunt, ibidemque pariunt, nec unquam sponte in siccum exeunt, aut extra aquas diu vivere possunt.â Ibid.; extended translation of Kusukawa, âHistoria Piscium (1686) and Its Sources,â 308.
Anthony Grafton, New Worlds, Ancient Texts: The Power of Tradition and the Shock of Discovery (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1995), 248. They did so, however, on their own terms with their unique way of engaging with classical philosophical texts through an intricate textual, humanistic tradition, see: Dmitri Levitin, Ancient Wisdom in the Age of the New Science: Histories of Philosophy in England, c. 1640â1700 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), 4.
Gianna Pomata, âPraxis Historialis: The Uses of Historia in Early Modern Medicine,â in Historia: Empiricism and Erudition in Early Modern Europe, eds. Gianna Pomata and Nancy G. Siraisi (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2005), 113.
Smith, Body of the Artisan, 42.
Ibid. The term âobservationâ could refer to the actual act of observing, or the (often written or drawn) report that was made of an observation. Dirk van Miert, âIntroduction,â in Communicating Observations in Early Modern Letters (1500â1675): Epistolography and Epistemology in the Age of the Scientific Revolution, ed. Dirk van Miert (London: The Warburg Institute, 2013), 3.
A Latin Dictionary, comp. Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1879), s.v. aquatilia.
Pierre Belon, De aquatilibus, libri duo: cum eiconibus ad vivam ipsorum effigiem, quoad ejus fieri potuit, expressis (Paris: Carolum Stephanum, 1553); Hippolyto Salviani, Aquatilium animalium historiae liber primus (Rome: Hippolyto Salviani, 1554â1558). Another early example is Nicolaus Marschalk, Historia aquatilium latine ac grace cum figuris (Rostock: Nicolaus Marschalk, 1517).
Conrad Gessner, Historiae animalium liber IIII. qui est de piscium & aquatilium animantium natura (Zurich: Christoph Froschauer, 1558); henceforth cited as Hist. anim. IIII.
Florike Egmond, Eye for Detail: Images of Plants and Animals in Art and Science 1500â1630 (London: Reaktion Books, 2017), 60.
âles poissons qui nâont point de sangâ and âles poissons coverts [couverts] de test durâ; Guillaume Rondelet, LâHistoire entière des poissons (Lyon: Macé Bonhomme, 1558), table of contents.
Egmond, Eye for Detail, 60; Ogilvie, Science of Describing, 234â235.
Gen. 1:26.
Enenkel, âDie antike Vorgeschichte,â 50.
See also: Eric Lewis, âAristotleâs Physical Theory,â in The Cambridge History of Science, eds. Alexander Jones and Liba Taub, vol. 1, Ancient Science (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018), 196â214.
David Gentilcore, Food and Health in Early Modern Europe: Diet, Medicine and Society, 1450â1800 (London: Bloomsbury, 2016), 19.
Ray to Robinson, 13 March 1684 (OS), The Further Correspondence of Ray, ed. Robert W. Theodore Gunther (London: The Ray Society, 1928), 164.
Eric Jorink, âInsects, Philosophy and the Microscope,â in Curry, Jardine, Secord, and Spary, Worlds of Natural History, 136.
A systematic discussion of Descartesâ Principia philosophiae is offered in Stephen Gaukroger, Descartesâ System of Natural Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002).
Jorink, âInsects, Philosophy and the Microscope,â 136.
Richard Serjeantson, âThe Education of Francis Willughby,â in Virtuoso by Nature: The Scientific Worlds of Francis Willughby (FRS), ed. Tim Birkhead (Leiden: Brill, 2016), 75, 94â95, 97.
Hist. pisc., 16â18.
Aristotle, History of Animals in Ten Books, book VI, chapter XIV, ed. and trans. Cresswell, 157.
Rondelet, LâHistoire entière des poissons, 108. In the loose and abbreviated German translation that Conrad Forrer (c.1530â1594) made of Gessnerâs Hist. anim. IIII, Rondeletâs statement that carp are sometimes born from chaos and dirt, and sometimes from seed and roe is copied, see: Conrad Gessner, Fischbuch, trans. Conrad Forrer (Zurich: Christopher Froschauer, 1563), 164â165.
Jorink,âBeyond the Lines of Apelles,â 153â159. Descartes himself did not entirely rule out spontaneous generation, see: Eric Jorink, âSnakes, Fungi and Insects. Otto Marseus van Schrieck, Johannes Swammerdam and the Theory of Spontaneous Generation,â in Smith and Enenkel, Zoology in Early Modern Culture, 199â207.
This was William Harveyâs Exercitationes de generatione animalium (London: Du Gardianis, 1651).
Hist. pisc., 18.
Lodewijk Palm, âLeeuwenhoek and Other Dutch Correspondents of the Royal Society,â Notes and Records of the Royal Society of London 43, no. 2 (1989): 192â193; Sietske Fransen, âAntoni van Leeuwenhoek, His Images and Draughtsmen,â Perspectives on Science 27, no. 3 (2019): 485â544.
Marlise Rijks, âA Taste for Fish: Paintings of Aquatic Animals in the Low Countries (1560â1729),â in Paul J. Smith and Florike Egmond (eds.), Ichthyology in Context (1500â1880) (Leiden: Brill, 2023), 270â271; Edward G. Ruestow, âImages and Ideas: Leeuwenhoekâs Perception of the Spermatozoa,â Journal of the History of Biology 16, no. 2 (1983): 188, 199.
Hist. pisc., 18. For more on Willughby and Rayâs attitudes towards spontaneous generation see: Brian Ogilvie, âInsects in John Rayâs Natural History and Natural Theology,â in Enenkel and Smith, Zoology in Early Modern Culture, 235â262; Ogilvie, âWillughby on Insects,â 350â351. John Rayâs Historia insectorum (London: A. & J. Churchill, 1710) appeared posthumously.
Ogilvie, âVisions of Ancient Natural History,â 25.
Willughby, Ornithology, preface, sig. A2v.
He studied so much that his tutor thought âhe should moderate his thirst for learningâ, see: William Poole, âThe Willughby Library in the Time of Francis the Naturalist,â in Birkhead, Virtuoso by Nature, 236.
Rayâs most influential physico-theological treatise, The Wisdom of God Manifested in the Works of the Creation (London: Samuel Smith, 1691) was reprinted in 1692, 1701 and 1704; it was translated in German, Dutch and French.
For Rayâs years at Cambridge, see: Raven, John Ray, 21â110.
For the history of the Willughby family, see: Cassandra Willoughby, An Account of an Elizabethan Family: The Willoughbys of Wollaton by Cassandra Willoughby, 1670â1735, ed. Jo Ann Hoeppner Moran Cruz in Royal Historical Society Camden Fifth Series 55 (2018): 67â258.
Willughbyâs time at Cambridge is discussed in more detail in Serjeantson, âThe Education of Francis Willughby,â 44â98.
Raven, John Ray, 60â61.
A concise overview of early modern academies is given in Jürgen Renn and Florian Schmaltz, âInstitutions and Knowledge Systems: Theoretical Perspectives,â in The Institutionalization of Science in Early Modern Europe, eds. Mordechai Feingold and Giulia Giannini (Leiden: Brill, 2019), 292â296.
That experience was not to be equated with objectivity is argued in Alexander Wragge-Morley, Aesthetic Science: Representing Nature in the Royal Society of London, 1650â1720 (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2020), 3â4.
Sprat, Thomas. The History of the Royal-Society of London for the Improving of Natural Knowledge (London: John Martyn, 1667), 83.
Sachiko Kusukawa, âThe Historia Piscium (1686),â Notes and Records of the Royal Society of London 54, no. 2 (2000): 179.
Except for Willughby, who ventured onwards to Spain. For a more detailed itinerary, see: Mark Greengrass, Daisy Hildyard, Christopher D. Preston and Paul J. Smith, âScience on the Move: Francis Willughbyâs Expeditions,â in Birkhead, Virtuoso by Nature, 152â193.
John Ray, Observations Topographical, Moral and Physiological, Made in a Journey through Part of the Low-Countries, Germany, Italy and France (London: John Martyn, 1673) and Skippon, Journey cited note 28; Willughbyâs account of the journey unfortunately appears no longer extant, though parts of it were subsumed in Rayâs. Greengrass, Hildyard, Preston and Smith, âScience on the Move,â 163.
Skippon, Journey, 653.
Alfonso Chacón, Historia iutruisque belli datici a Traiano Caesare gesti quae in columna euisdem Romae visuntur, collecta (Rome: Franciscum Zanettum & Bartholomaeum Tosium socios, 1576), A1r.
Greengrass, Hildyard, Preston and Smith, âScience on the Move,â 151.
Skippon, Journey, 446.
Philip Skippon, An Account of a Journey Made Thro. Part of the Low Countries, Germany, Italy and France (London: Churchill, 1732), 446; the painted books might have been what are now known as the Gessner-Platter albums held in the Special Collections Department of the Universiteitsbibliotheek Amsterdam (hereafter UBA), Amsterdam, hs. III C 22/23; for its recent discovery and its provenance, see Florike Egmond, âA Collection within a Collection: Rediscovered Animal Drawings from the Collections of Conrad Gessner and Felix Platter,â Journal for the History of Collections 25, no. 2 (2013): 149â170.
Sprat, The History of the Royal-Society, 251.
Nehemiah Grew, Musaeum Regalis Societatis, or, A catalogue & description of the natural and artificial rarities belonging to the Royal Society and preserved at Gresham Colledge (London: Hugh Newman, 1681), 1â10.
Dorothy Johnston, âThe Life and Domestic Context of Francis Willughby,â in Birkhead, Virtuoso by Nature, 7.
In this, he was hindered by no longer having access to Willughbyâs notes at Middleton. It is unclear why he had not copied these notes: there may have simply been too many, or he might not have expected to lose access to them in the first place.
Francis Willughby and John Ray, Francisci Willughbeii Armig. De historia piscium libri quatuor (Oxford: Sheldonian Theatre, 1686), title page. This work will henceforth be cited as Hist. pisc.
This debate is addressed in more detail in Isabelle Charmantier, Dorothy Johnston and Paul J. Smith, âThe Legacies of Francis Willughby,â in Birkhead, Virtuoso by Nature, 382â385.
Raven, John Ray, 51.
Birkhead, Virtuoso by Nature, and Birkhead, The Wonderful Mr. Willughby: The First True Ornithologist (London: Bloomsbury, 2018). Willughby is often counted among the virtuosi; for discussions of the category of the virtuoso, see the special issue The Varied Role of the Amateur in Early Modern Europe edited by Pamela Smith in Nuncius 31, no. 3 (2016): 485â609.
Kusukawa, âThe Historia Piscium (1686),â 179â197; Sachiko Kusukawa, âHistoria Piscium (1686) and Its Sources,â in Birkhead, Virtuoso by Nature, 305â334. An account of the publication process is also given in Anna Marie Roos, Web of Nature: Martin Lister (1639â1712): The First Arachnologist (Leiden: Brill, 2011), 318â332.
Kusukawa, âThe Historia Piscium (1686),â 180.
Sachiko Kusukawa, âHistoria Piscium (1686) and Its Sources,â 305.
Tara Nummedal and Paula Findlen, âWords of Nature: Scientific Books in the Seventeenth Century,â in Thorton and Tullyâs Scientific Books, Libraries and Collectors: A Study of Bibliography and the Book Trade in Relation to the History of Science, ed. Andrew Hunter (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2000), 189â192.
These letters were written in English, and excerpts of them were translated into Latin for inclusion in the Historia piscium, for example the experiment for determining the centres of gravity for a pilchard and a herring by holding the specimens by the tip of their back-fin: Tancred Robinson to Ray, 8 September 1685 (OS), The Correspondence of John Ray, ed. Edwin Lankester (London: The Ray Society, 1848), 174; cf. Hist. pisc., 224.
For Listerâs contributions, see: Roos, Web of Nature, 318â332.
Hist. pisc., 21.
These included descriptions by Lister as well as from Nieuhofâs Gedenkweerdige Brasiliaense Zee- en Lant-Reize.
See also: Adrian Johns, The Nature of the Book: Print and Knowledge in the Making (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000), 489.
Kusukawa, âThe Historia Piscium (1686),â 191.
Ibid.
A broad treatment of the ways in which money was made (or lost) in the business of books in the early modern period can be found in: Shanti Graheli, ed., Buying and Selling: The Business of Books in Early Modern Europe (Leiden: Brill, 2016).
Kusukawa, âThe Historia Piscium (1686),â 193; after the Historia piscium, the Society would refrain from offering direct financial support of projects, see: Nummedal and Findlen, âWords of Nature,â 191.
Felicity Henderson, âRobert Hooke and the Visual World of the Early Royal Society,â Perspectives on Science 27, no. 3 (2019): 398.
Thomas Birchâs History of the Royal Society, 4 vols (London: A. Millar, 1756â1757) offers accounts, albeit necessarily abridged and edited, of what transpired at the meetings of the Royal Society. Birch, History of the Royal Society, vol. 1, 20 and vol. 3, 97.
On the early history of the Philosophical Transactions see: Noah Moxham, âAuthors, Editors and Newsmongers: Form and Genre in the Philosophical Transactions under Henry Oldenburg,â in News Networks in Early Modern Europe, eds. Joad Raymond and Noah Moxham (Leiden: Brill, 2016), 465â492.
Hist. pisc. app., sig. Hr/v. Kusukawa, âThe Historia Piscium (1686),â 182.
Ogilvie, Science of Describing, 6.
Charmantier, âEmblematics in Ornithology in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries,â Emblematica 18 (2010), 84.
Ogilvie, Science of Describing, 216.
For a discussion of different forms of taxonomy, see Ogilvie, Science of Describing, 219â228.
Sophia Hendrikx, âGessnerâs Taxonomical Skill Exhibited in his Discussion of Felchen,â in Conrad Gessner (1516â1565) Die Renaissance der Wissenschaften/The Renaissance of Learning, eds. Urs B. Leu and Peter Opitz (Zurich: De Gruyter Oldenbourg, 2019), 610.
Sophia Hendrikx, âIdentification of Herring Species in Conrad Gessnerâs Ichthyological Works: A Case Study on Taxonomy, Nomenclature, and Animal Depiction in the Sixteenth Century,â in Enenkel and Smith, Zoology in Early Modern Culture, 158.
Sophia Hendrikx, Conrad Gessnerâs Fish Books (1556â1560): Processing Information in a Rapidly Expanding Field of Knowledge (PhD diss., Leiden University, 2024), 70â73.
Hist. pisc., 46.
Ibid.
A detailed overview of the morphological groupings of the Hist. pisc. can be found in Kusukawa, âHistoria Piscium (1686) and Its Sources,â 309.
Ray later summarised and developed their methods for classifying fish in Synopsis methodica avium & piscium (London: William Derham, 1713).
Ray, The Wisdom of God, 369.
Willughby, Ornithology, preface, sig. A4v.
The notion of âcharacteristic marksâ is explained in more detail in Kusukawa, âThe Historia Piscium (1686),â 182.
Willughby, Ornithology, preface, sig. A4v.
Hist. pisc., 47â64.
Cf. descriptions of âMustelus laevis secundusâ in Hist. pisc., 51 and âMustelus laevis primusâ, ibid., 60.
Hist. pisc., 219.
For this textual organisation tool, see: Ann Blair, âAnnotating and Indexing Natural History,â in Books and the Sciences in History, eds. Nicholas Jardine and Marina Frasca-Spada (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 72.
See: Anita Guerrini, The Courtiersâ Anatomists: Animals and Humans in Louis XIVâs Paris (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2016), 57â61.
See also: Gillian Lewis, âThe Debt of John Ray and Martin Lister to Guillaume Rondelet of Montpellier,â Notes and Records of the Royal Society of London 66, no. 4 (2012): 323â339.
Kusukawa, âHistoria Piscium (1686) and Its Sources,â 316.
Drawings of the dissection of a flair, Middleton Collection (hereafter Mi LM), Special Collections Department of University of Nottingham (hereafter NUL), Mi LM 25/12â15; drawings 14 and 15 are reproduced in Birkhead, The Wonderful Mr. Willughby, 120.
Since Skippon notes on drawing Mi LM 25/12 that it portrays âthe second sightâ it is possible that the drawing was originally preceded with another.
NUL, Mi LM 25/14; Kusukawa, âHistoria Piscium (1686) and Its Sources,â 316.
Willughby, Ornithology, preface, sig. A3r. See also: Birkhead, Smith, Doherty and Charmantier, âWillughbyâs Ornithology,â 269â270.
Kusukawa, âHistoria Piscium (1686) and Its Sources,â 315.
William B. Ashworth has characterised this way of looking at the natural world as the emblematic worldview in his âNatural History and the Emblematic Worldview,â in Reappraisals of the Scientific Revolution, eds. David C. Lindberg and Robert S. Westman (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 303â332 and âEmblematic Natural History of the Renaissance,â in Cultures of Natural History, eds. Nicholas Jardine, James Secord and Emma C. Spary (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 17â37.
Birkhead, Smith, Doherty and Charmantier, âWillughbyâs Ornithology,â 269.
âFigurae Novae, quae non paucae sunt, â notanturâ; on how the daggers have not been consistently applied, see Kusukawa, âThe Historia Piscium (1686),â 186.
A detailed overview of the sources for the images can be found in Kusukawa, âHistoria Piscium and Its Sources,â 318â333.
Alexander Wragge-Morley, Aesthetic Science: Representing Nature in the Royal Society of London, 1650â1720 (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2020), 106; chapter 4 esp. examines the interrelations between verbal and textual depictions and their affects, 106â134.
Kusukawa, âThe Historia Piscium (1686),â 183.
Birch, History of the Royal Society, vol. 4, 380.
Ibid., 382.
Ibid.
Ibid. See also: Roos, Web of Nature, 321.
Birch, History of the Royal Society vol. 4, 382.
Ibid.
Ibid., 380; Sachiko Kusukawa, âPicturing Knowledge in the Early Royal Society: The Examples of Richard Waller and Henry Hunt,â Notes and Records of the Royal Society of London 65, no. 3 (2011): 280.
Birch, History of the Royal Society vol. 4, 380.
See: Sietske Fransen, Katherine M. Reinhart and Sachiko Kusukawa, âCopying Images in the Archives of the Early Royal Society,â Word & Image 35, no. 3 (2019): 256â276.
Henderson, âRobert Hooke and the Visual World of the Early Royal Society,â 421.
Sachiko Kusukawa, âThe Early Royal Society and Visual Culture,â Perspectives on Science 27, no. 3 (2019): 381.
Kusukawa, Picturing the Book of Nature, 64â69. A careful study on the reuse of botanical woodblocks can be found in Jessie Wei-Hsuan Chen, âA Woodblockâs Career: Transferring Visual Botanical Knowledge in the Early Modern Low Countries,â Nuncius 35, no. 1 (2020): 20â63.
Cf. Salviani, Aquatilium animalium historiae, tab P1 and Hist. pisc., tab G4.
See also: Angela Fischel, Natur im Bild: Zeichnung und Naturerkenntnis bei Conrad Gessner und Ulisse Aldrovandi (Berlin: Gebr. Mann, 2009), 103â106.
Kusukawa, Picturing the Book of Nature, 32â33.
Ibid. 32â34.
Kusukawa, âHistoria Piscium (1686) and Its Sources,â 307.
Roos, Web of Nature, 323.
The individual plates do not specify who worked on which engraving. Most of the engravers are identified by name in Kusukawa, âThe Historia Piscium (1686),â 191.
A (partially) coloured copy of the Ornithology is described, however, in Robert Montgomerie and Tim R. Birkhead, âSamuel Pepysâs Hand-Coloured Copy of John Rayâs âThe Ornithology of Francis Willughbyâ (1678),â Journal of Ornithology 150, no. 4 (2009): 884.
Kusukawa, Picturing the Book of Nature, 76.
The historiography on the theme has been summarised and analysed by Thomas Balfe and Joanna Woodall, âIntroduction: The Lives of Ad vivum,â in Ad vivum? Visual Materials and the Vocabulary of Life-Likeness in Europe before 1800, eds. Thomas Balfe, Joanna Woodall and Claus Zittel (Leiden: Brill, 2019).
Sachiko Kusukawa, âAd vivum Images and Knowledge of Nature in Early Modern Europe,â in Balfe, Woodall and Zittel, Ad vivum?, 112.
Ibid., 90â91.
Ibid.
Egmond, Eye for Detail, 94.
See also: Peter Whitehead, âGeorge Markgraf and Brazilian Zoology,â in Johan Maurits van Nassau-Siegen: A Humanist Prince in Europe and Brazil, ed. E. van den Boogaard (The Hague: Mauritshuis, 1979), 424â471; A Portrait of Dutch 17th Century Brasil: Animals, Plants and People by the Artists of Johan Maurits of Nassau, eds. Peter Whitehead and Marinus Boeseman (Amsterdam: North-Holland Publishing Company, 1989).
Recent research has brought to light Johan Mauritsâs role in the transatlantic slave trade. Carolina Monteiro and Eric Odegard, âSlavery at the Court of the âHumanist Princeâ Reexamining Johan Maurits van Nassau-Siegen and his Role in Slavery, Slave Trade and Slave-smuggling in Dutch Brazil,â Journal of Early American History 10, no. 1 (2020): 3â32.
Drawing of a pufferfish, NUL, Mi LM 25/21.
The Middleton collection holds six drawings that served as models for these engravings, see: Kusukawa, âHistoria Piscium (1686) and Its Sources,â 326â327.
Cf. Hist. pisc. tab I8. For the notion ârhetoric of the realâ, see Martin Kemp, âStyle and Non-Style in Anatomical Illustration: From Renaissance Humanism to Henry Gray,â Journal of Anatomy 216, no. 2 (2010): 192â208.
Paul J. Smith, âMarcgrafâs Fish in the Historia Naturalis Brasiliae and the Rhetorics of Autoptic Testimony,â in Mariana C. Françozo (ed.), Toward an intercultural natural history of Brazil. The Historia Naturalis Brasiliae reconsidered (New York: Routledge, 2023), 131.
Janice Neri, The Insect and the Image: Visualizing Nature in Early Modern Europe 1500â1700 (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2011), xii; a critique of this term is found in Egmond, Eye for Detail, 104.
Cf. Hist. pisc., tab B5 and B6.
Wragge-Morley, Aesthetic Science, 107.
Kusukawa, âThe Historia Piscium (1686),â 186.
Kusukawa, âIllustrating Nature,â 97.