Buonanni's Chiocciole (1681)
Filippo Buonanni. Ricreatione dell' occhio e della mente nell' osservation' delle Chiocciole. Rome, 1681.
This is the oldest book devoted to glorifying the beauty of seashells. The title translates: "for the delight of the eyes and the mind in observing snails."
This book by Filippo Buonanni (1638-1725) preceded the origin of the science of malacology and the adoption of Linnaeus' system of binomial nomenclature (genus + species). Not surprisingly for its age, its illustrations often contain scientific errors. Many of the spirially coiled shells were wrongly printed backwards (the appreciation that nearly all snails are paticular in the direction of shell coiling did not come until much later).
Depictions of the animals bodies, such as that in the bottom figure here, are especially fanciful. Buonanni presented a geographically varied group of shells and an ignorance of their bodies is understandable. The only accurate illustration of a living animal was that of the common garden snail (Helix), a species that must have been readily available to a 17th century naturalist living in Italy.
Despite these problems, the book is scientifically important because some Linnaean and later names are based on its illustration.