Histoire Naturelle des Indes
18 of 122
Accession number: MA 3900
Credit: The Morgan Library & Museum. Bequest of Clara S. Peck, 1983.
Title: Histoire Naturelle des Indes [supplied on an 18th century title page]
Contents: 199 images of West Indian plants, animals and human life, with accompanying manuscript captions written in late sixteenth-century French.
Medium: Most of the illustrations consist of a black chalk underdrawing and a combination of pen and brown ink with watercolor; on some images selected areas have also been glazed with a gum.
Dimensions: Binding: 30 x 21 cm; individual leaves: 29.3 x 19.7 cm.
Binding: Bound or rebound in brown leather in the late 18th century.
Pagination: Penciled folio numbers (1–125) in lower right corner of each page were added by The Morgan Library & Museum. Folios 92v–93, 93v–94, and 95v–96 are fold-out leaves.
Histoire Naturelle des Indes
Bregele
This herb serves to soften hard iron. They take the leaf and some soil which they call "a bar" and wrap the iron with said leaf. They cover it with earth and then throw it in the fire and the fire being sufficiently hot, it [the iron] becomes as soft as lead.
Patates De La Marguerite (Sweet Potato from the Isla De Margarita, Venezuela)
This fruit is also eaten instead of bread after being roasted over wood-embers.
Rovmerre
An herb very good for bad air. The Indians throw it in the fire in their houses and burn it and if there are some poisonous animals of any sort when they smell the smoke of this herb, they die instantly and by the same method all the poison disappears.
Histoire Naturelle des Indes
Illustrated manuscript, ca. 1586
Bequest of Clara S. Peck, 1983; MA 3900 (fol. 17v–18)
