MOTES AND QUERIES. 315 



BIBLIOGRAPHY. 



A Rare Zoological Publication. — The sale of the Huth Library has 

 ' given us the opportunity to acquire a work to which at length the 

 attention of zoologists should be drawn. We refer to the miniatures 

 by Georg Hoefnagel, painted between 1576 and 1582, giving figures 

 covering the whole range of the animal kingdom. Executed for the 

 Emperor Eudolph II., who, it is related, paid one thousand golden 

 crowns for each of the four volumes, still they must have passed out 

 of the Imperial treasures, as in course of time they went successively 

 from one private collection to another. We find references to the 

 work in Sandrart's biographies (1774), in the biography of the artist 

 by Eetis, in Nagler's ' Kuenstler Lexicon,' and in Hagen's ' Biblio- 

 theca Entomologica,' but the meagre descriptions, given by the 

 authors on art referred to, are copied from each other, and Hagen, 

 though he realized its great value, was unfortunately unable to see 

 the work. 



Anyone examining Hoefnagel's paintings is bound to admit that 

 they are the creations of a great artist, but the point of paramount 

 importance is the fact that he must have been a keen observer, who, 

 not merely working with imaginative genius upon drawings already in 

 existence, depicted with inimitable skill the material he had before 

 him in the faunas of his own and of other countries that he visited 

 during his travels. A complete iconography being evidently his 

 purpose, he had to include some animals which he could know only 

 by repute or from the descriptions of others, and thus the eye is 

 pleased with a credible Barnacle Goose and other mythical creatures. 



Though Georg Hoefnagel may be little known at present in the 

 history of zoology, we claim for him his place as the father of the 

 coloured zoological illustration, and that his work remains to the 

 present day in many respects unsurpassed. The history of the art of 

 depicting natural history objects remains to be written, but some 

 readers of ' The Zoologist ' may be interested in it. These are invited 

 to inquire into the truth of our statement by personal inspection, by 

 permission and request of its purchaser. — Wm. Wesley & Son 

 (28, Essex Street, Strand," London). 



[We are informed that the work is sold, and will find its home in 

 a Hampshire library. — Ed.] 



