Histoire Naturelle des Indes
25 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
Pite (Silk-Grass)
This tree grows in the county of Le Rayne [Columbia] in the Magdalene River, also called the Great River. They extract from it material to make a beautiful thread like silk having the color of silver.
Madae (Madera)
It is a tree which bears no fruit. It is the most beautiful wood one can see when it is stripped. It is among the hardest wood of all that can be found, having purple color inside and being veined and beautiful par excellence; it also has a good color.
Histoire Naturelle des Indes
Illustrated manuscript, ca. 1586
Bequest of Clara S. Peck, 1983; MA 3900 (fol. 24v–25)
