Historia Piscium (1686) and Its Sources 305

Chapter 9 Historia Piscium (1686) and Its Sources

Sachiko Kusukawa

Anyone who wants to know who the author of the Historia piscium was should look up the preface of another book written by the same author, the Ornithology (1676).1 Thus began John Ray’s preface to Historia piscium. The title page of the book indeed declared: ‘The armigerous Francis Willughby’s four books on the history of fishes, published by the command and at the expense of the Royal Society of London.’ The publication of this book was the first venture that the Royal Society directly took financial and logistical responsibility for— in the words of the Secretary, Francis Aston (1644–1715, FRS 16782), it was ‘the first thing of that nature we ever went about’.3 The title page ended: ‘John Ray of the Royal Society reviewed [recognovit], brought together [coaptavit] and supplemented [supplevit] the entire work and also put together all of the first and second books.’ It indicates Ray’s role as the author of the first two books and a compiler and editor of the rest. Ray’s substantial intellectual input into this book as well as the Ornithology was well documented by Charles Raven many years ago.4 Unlike the Ornithology, however, the Historia piscium offi- cially had the support of the Royal Society, and other fellows of the Society actively contributed to it.5 Moreover, the Historia piscium drew extensively on earlier and contemporary works on fishes. The aim of this chapter is to reassess the Historia piscium as a product of many different sources, and to understand the variety of practices of reading, note-taking, compilation, and observation that went into a monumental publication of the natural history of fishes towards the end of the seventeenth century.

1 Willughby and Ray, Historia piscium (hereafter Hist. pisc.), br; Willughby, Ornithologiae, a1r. 2 The year of election to the Fellowship of the Royal Society. 3 Gunther, Dr. Plot, 85. It was also the last, because of the less than ideal rate of sales, Bluhm, ‘Royal Society’s Finances’; and Kusukawa, ‘Historia Piscium’. 4 Raven, John Ray (1942), chapters 12 and 13. 5 For the logistical and financial support of the Society for Historia piscium, see Kusukawa, ‘Historia Piscium’.

Historia Piscium and Earlier Publication on Fishes

Since the sixteenth century, publications in natural history drew on compila- tions of earlier and contemporary works, which provided a historical context in which to gauge one’s own findings.6 This form of scholarship, described as ‘erudite empiricism’ by Pomata and Siraisi, characterises the works of the sixteenth century that naturalists in the seventeenth century relied upon.7 The fourth volume of Conrad Gessner’s Historia animalium on fish, published in 1558, is a good example of such an approach. Just before its publication, three other illustrated works on aquatic animals had appeared, namely Pierre Belon’s De aquatilibus (1553), Guillaume Rondelet’s Libri de Piscibus Marinis (1554), and Hippolyto Salviani’s Aquatilium animalium historiae liber primus (1554). Gessner relied extensively on Rondelet’s work by using the latter’s names of fishes, citing verbatim his descriptions and copying the woodcuts.8 Gessner relied less frequently on Belon’s work for comparison or supplement, and his references to Salviani’s work were more sporadic, though he did copy some of Salviani’s images.9 These citations were often followed by a ‘corollary’ in which Gessner cited other classical authors and later commentators, and added information from his correspondents and his own observations. Each entry of a fish discussed its name in several languages, its appearance, habitat, habits, character, the method of capturing it, its uses as food and medicine, followed by a lengthy section on philology (places and other things named after the fish, proverbs involving it, as well as historical, poetical, literary, and emblematic references). Ulisse Aldrovandi’s De piscibus libri V (1613) reproduced the text and images contained in Gessner’s book and also retained sections on proverbs and emblematic or hieroglyphic references (though more truncated than in Gessner’s work). While the philological aspects were important for the

6 Pinon, ‘Conrad Gessner’; and Ogilvie, Science of Describing. 7 Pomata and Siraisi, Historia. 8 Over half of the 664 images in Gessner, Historiae animalium liber IIII, are copied from the woodcuts in Rondelet, Libri de Piscibus Marinis, usually with the tell-tale sign of left/right inversion. Even where a woodcut is not reproduced, Gessner often discusses Rondelet’s images for comparison. Gessner’s engagement with Rondelet’s textual description is even more ex- tensive, and thus the whole of Rondelet’s work forms a foundation of Gessner’s volume of fishes. 9 Images from Belon, De aquatilibus libri duo, account for about 5 percent of the printed images in Gessner, Historiae animalium liber IIII, and Gessner cites more frequently Belon’s textual descriptions, often to compare with Rondelet’s passages. For Gessner’s use of Salviani, Aquatilium animalium historiae, see, for example, Historiae animalium liber IIII, 1038, 1260, 1264, 1283.