Renard's Poissons, Ecrevisse et Crabes (1678)

Louis Renard. Poissons, Ecrevisses et Crabes, de Diverses Couleurs et Figures Extraordinaires, Que l'on Trouve Autour des Isles Moluques et sur les Côtes des Terres Australes. Amsterdam, 1754.

A translation of the title of this work, "Fishes, crayfishes, and crabs, of diverse coloration and extraordinary form, which are to be found about the Islands of the Moluccas and on the coasts of the Southern Lands," gives a glimpse of its remarkable contents. There are 100 plates with brilliantly colored engravings representing 416 fishes, 40 crustaceans, two grasshoppers, one dugong, and a mermaid. With minor exceptions, all of the illustrations depict tropical species of the East Indies, and area encompassing the Indian subcontinent, the Malay peninsula, Sumatra, Java, and the countless islands east of the South China Sea. It is one of the rarest and most famous natural history books known, and one of the very few pre-Linnaean works on fishes to be published in color.

The first volume contains plates engraved after paintings made by Samuel Fallours for the governor of Amboina in the Dutch East Indies (present day Indonesia). They were brought from Amboina to Amsterdam by the son of the governor and found their way to Renard.

The second volume contains plates engraved after paintings made at Ambon by Samuel Fallours, who brought them to Holland in 1715. The fish depicted often border on the surreal. Despite Fallour's artistic license, evident in many fantastic images, ichthyologists have been able to identify the genus and often the species of almost all of them (with a few obvious exceptions such as the mermaid). The coloring of the plates is brilliant and follows closely the originals. The work contains no text apart from the engraved descriptions on the plates themselves, but this text is quite extraordinary. Almost every fish is assessed in terms of its edibility, and for many Fallours has given brief recipes, a feature virtually unique to zoological books of this period. Testimonials are given at the beginning of the work to the veracity of the illustrations, one of which cites the author François Valentijn to the effect that not only did he see the fish painted by Fallours in Amboina, but also that he ate them on many occasions with the artist!