Histoire Naturelle des Indes
24 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
Patates (Sweet Potato)
The Indians make them into a beverage; after having boiled them in water, they squeeze them out with their hands and they get drunk as with wine.
Miel Savvage (Wild Honey Tree)
It is called wild honey tree, growing in the woods. They cook it with palm marrow and eat it like very excellent bread.
Barbeqve
This tree grows in Florida; it is orange inside and has an excellent odor like a rose. The Indians boil it and make paint from it with which they paint men and women to make them more beautiful.
Histoire Naturelle des Indes
Illustrated manuscript, ca. 1586
Bequest of Clara S. Peck, 1983; MA 3900 (fol. 23v–24)
