The Joseph F. Cullman 3rd Library recently acquired Ippolito Salviani’s Aquatilium animalium historiae (Rome, 1554), a classic, foundational work on fishes. The book is one of three 16th-century works that established ichthyology as a modern science. The Libraries holds the other two – Belon’s De aquatilibus (1553, a Latin translation of his Histoire de la nature des estranges poissons marins, 1551) and Rondelet’s Libri de piscibus marinis (1554) – and has now completed the trio. The Aquatilium animalium historiae is a tremendous asset for the National Museum of Natural History’s curators in the Division of Fishes, who advised on the purchase.
