Leonhard Baldner: Book on Fishes, Birds, and Mammals

Leonhard Baldner: Book on Fishes, Birds, and Mammals

Leonhard Baldner (1612–94) was a fisherman, forest manager, and naturalist from Strasbourg known for his illustrated Book on Fishes, Birds, and Mammals. Six manuscripts of the work still exist, two dated to 1653 and the other four 1666, an example of which is presented here. The work is based entirely upon his own observations without using any other source material. It is written in German and divided into three parts: the first deals with birds, the second with fish and crustaceans, and the third with quadrupeds and other animals. To illustrate these observations, he hired an artist named Johann Georg Walther, another Strasbourg native about whom little is known. The manuscript is remarkable for both its artistry and the quasi-modern zoological approach of the author. Baldner was one of the first to use glass aquariums in order to study fish and is believed to be the first to write on the migration and life cycle of the salmon. His magnum opus stands as a testimony to a lifetime of carefully observing nature.