Identification of New World aquatic invertebrate illustrations in The Drake Manuscript

Reuben Goforth,Jules Janick

doi:10.1080/00222933.2014.941724

Abstract

Images of aquatic invertebrates are included in a late 16th-century work, Historie Naturelle des Indes, also known as The Drake Manuscript. While the renderings are often whimsical and exaggerated, they nonetheless appear to be based on direct observations. We sought to identify these aquatic invertebrates and explore their early history. Most were identifiable to species based on the renderings and captions. Images of horseshoe crab were also found in Brief and True Report of the Found Land of Virginia (1590), which contains etchings derived from watercolours by John White. We speculate that renderings of horseshoe crab in The Drake Manuscript may have descended from a lost detailed watercolour by John White in connection with his voyages to Roanoke rather than being based on direct observations. Finally, the freshwater unionoid mussel illustration appears to be the oldest known depiction of mantle lures unique to some species in this taxon.

Highlights

Modern ecology and evolutionary biology are heavily steeped in the natural history reflections and reports contributed by highly visible naturalists such as Jean-Baptiste Lamarck (1744–1829), Alexander von Humboldt (1769–1859), and Charles Darwin (1809–1882)
An anonymous illustrated manuscript in French entitled Historie Naturelle des Indes dated to the late 16th century was published in 1996 by the Morgan Library and Museum in a facsimile edition entitled The Drake Manuscript, since there appears to be a connection with Sir Francis Drake’s voyage to the New World (Janick 2012)
Our objective in this paper is to identify the species illustrated and comment on the origin of horseshoe crab illustrations in this and other contemporary printings of the late 16th and early 17th centuries

Summary

Introduction

Modern ecology and evolutionary biology are heavily steeped in the natural history reflections and reports contributed by highly visible naturalists such as Jean-Baptiste Lamarck (1744–1829), Alexander von Humboldt (1769–1859), and Charles Darwin (1809–1882). Janick which are referred to as ‘conches’), and two views of Limulus polyphemus horseshoe crab Examination of these images suggests that they were based on observations of actual specimens despite the whimsical nature of some of the renderings (e.g. humanlike eyes in the illustration of the lobster and the many serpent-like ‘fish’ associated with the stream-dwelling mussel). We comment on the novelty of the freshwater mussel illustration as it relates to the history of the iconography for this taxonomic group

Bivalve molluscs

Exact species unknown

Oyster from Loranbec

Limulus polyphemus

Pen shell

Source of the illustrations