JF Ptak Science Books Quick Post [Part of the Unintentional Absurdist series.]
This illustration comes from the beautiful Bibliodyessy site (follow link for the full description of the artwork), where the curator unearthed this series of 32 hand-colored engravings of the gardens of the great emblematicist, Jacob Cats. I wonder why this fellow had such a strong reaction to whatever it was he was seeing. I guess he was just looking at the shrub, but the vicinity of the eight, and its potential peril (!) for what it might represent (from eight-of-something-bad to the sign for an inverted infinity) , made this a little too good to resist. [This is the first in a series of “found” images displaying unusual reactions to unintentioned floating numbers.]
And the full image from which this detail was removed, a garden Mount Parnasus.
