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The plates are arranged less like a modern field guide than like the cabinet they describe. Snakes coil into ornamental loops, shells fan out in radiating rosettes, and butterflies and moths are laid out in symmetrical rows beside their caterpillars.
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Description
101 hand-colored plates selected from Albertus Seba's four-volume Thesaurus (1734–1765), among the most lavish natural-history books ever printed. Seba, an Amsterdam pharmacist, built one of the largest private collections of his age from specimens brought home by sailors from the East and West Indies. The plates show it as he arranged it: snakes coiled into ornamental loops, shells fanned into rosettes, butterflies and moths in symmetrical rows beside their caterpillars, plus birds, mammals, reptiles, corals, crustaceans and minerals. Presented in the original order, each plate with a short caption and its volume, scanned from the Smithsonian Libraries copies.
