Le iardin, et cabinet poetique de Paul Contant, apoticaire de Poictiers
A 1609 French natural history and poetry book by Paul Contant, an apothecary of Poitiers, printed at Poitiers by Anthoine Mesnier, with its pages of botanical and curious creatures. The pictures are small woodcut-style plates of horseshoe crabs, starfish, lizards, armadillos, and a puffer fish, numbered and arranged in grids on aged paper, with one decorative initial P showing foliage and a fox. A designer could take the tidy numbered specimen layouts and the dense hatched shading typical of early modern naturalist prints.
