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Comprehensive and entertaining, this volume comprises the greatest works in animal illustration from the Middle Ages through the twentieth century. The chronological presentation of hundreds of black-and-white and color images begins with a medieval illuminated manuscript by the Limbourg brothers and the Renaissance works of Albrecht Drer and other artists from the first centuries of printing. Subsequent illustrations include the seventeenth-century real and imaginary animals of Matthus Merian and the unique eighteenth-century compilations of Albertus Seba. Nineteenth-century images are drawn from sources as diverse as J. G. Heck's Bilder Atlas; the prints of Georges Baron Cuvier; William Jardine's 40-volume Naturalist's Library; bird illustrations by John James Audubon, Alexander Wilson, Edward Lear, and many others; extraordinary butterfly and insect images by E.