18th Century
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“Of all the folios in the Hoover Collection this is surely one of the most engrossing to the casual browser with its startling and amusing pictures of animals, plants and people: here a whale is being stripped of blubber, Indians are seen harvesting tobacco, a tiny human figure is suspended within a bell jar, a camel is making sal ammoniac in a highly original fashion.” 

Herbert Clark Hoover Collection of Mining and Metallurgy,  Sprague Library.

“ The Spanish King appointed Ulloa, a naval officer and mathematician, to proceed to South America with his friend Don Jorge Juan y Santacilia and join a French scientific expedition to measure precisely one degree of the meridian at the equator.  Ulloa wrote most of the above work and mentioned along the way interesting accounts of gold and silver mines as well as a reference to native platinum.” 

Herbert Clark Hoover Collection of Mining and Metallurgy, Sprague Library

Considered one of Spain’s finest printers, Joaquin Ibarra was printer to the Court of Spain. This Spanish version of Sallust is widely considered to be one of the  finest books ever  produced. It was greatly admired by Benjamin Franklin, a great American printer.

Rare Book Room, Denison Library
 

Sir William Hamilton, English Ambassador to the Court of Naples, witnessed several volcanic eruptions and their aftermaths.  His observations on geological events were extraordinarily accurate. Several years later, Ambassador Hamilton’s wife, Emma, caught the eye of Admiral Lord Nelson during a visit to Naples. The rest is legendary history. 

Woodford Collection, Seeley G. Mudd Science Library

This thirteenth volume of the twenty-one volume set printed between 1776 and 1790 contains twenty-six engravings of the Desert de Rez, the private pleasure garden of Monsieur de Monville. 

Rare Book Room, Denison Library

Title and text in Japanese. 

Special Collections, Honnold/Mudd Library

Faujas de Saint-Fond was a French geologist with a keen interest in fossils.  Near Maestricht, a Dutch frontier town, he discovered extraordinary subterranean sandstone quarries. 

Woodford Collection, Seeley G. Mudd Science Library

Rare Book Room, Denison Library

[See also La Fabule di Esopo latine—volgare dove si vede mirabilissimi e notandi amaestramenti… Venice, Augustinum de Bindonis, 1554.  Each of these versions of Aesop’s Fables, printed nearly 250 years apart, is open to an illustration of “The Ass and the Little Dog.”]