JF Ptak Science Books   Post 1454

As part of this blog’s continuing series on Strange Things in the Sky is this delightfully illustrated work by Conradus (Konrad)  Lycosthenes (1518-61), Die Wunder Gotes in der Natur, bey Ewrscheinung der Cometen oder, Besondere Anmerckung der vornehmsten Cometen, oder, Strobel-Stern published in Frankfurt in 1744.  I’m sure it was anything but “delightful” at the time, being a wonder book of God’s handiwork in the heavens and all, revealing twhat some  famous comets (and other celestial wonders) might have looked like through the ages.  Lycosthenes was a polymathic guy, teaching grammar and dialectics at Basel, and embarked on a wide writing career in which he wrote (and translated) on many different areas, though it seems that he was interested in recurring oddities and the unusual, a humanist encyclopaedist. 

The book is actually about nine inches tall or so and is illustrated with 41 pages each of which is crowded with two images, face-to-face, as so [source]:

The rest of the 41 engraved plates can be seen below [source]:

1 : Phénomène obbservé lors du passage de la comète de 1744. [Cote :2487A]