Francois Le Vaillant’s Birds

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The week’s eBook pick is the six volumes of Francois Le Valllant’s Histoire naturelle des oiseaux d'Afrique published between 1796 and 1808 and available from Internet Archive. The illustrations of birds were created from his collection of skins preserved with arsenic soap that were stuffed and mounted in near lifelike positions. He was one of the first to use color plates in his books about birds and was a keen observer of bird behavior. Enjoy the sample images….and browsing the whole volumes!

Histoire naturelle des oiseaux d'Afrique T. 1

Histoire naturelle des oiseaux d'Afrique T. 2

Histoire naturelle des oiseaux d'Afrique T. 3

Histoire naturelle des oiseaux d'Afrique T. 4

Histoire naturelle des oiseaux d'Afrique T. 5

Histoire naturelle des oiseaux d'Afrique T. 6

L'art Vietnamien (ebook)

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L’art Vietnamien was written by Louis Bezacier, a French archaeologist and art historian. It was published in 1955.

L'art Vietnamien

As I browsed the book, I found myself wanting more illustrations; the ones that were there acted to stimulate my interest but not satisfy it. I also wondered how much of Vietnam’s art history was damaged or destroyed in the battles that followed. The author first began his work in Vietnam in 1935 and published for at least 20 years after that…but this book is the only one that is currently on Internet Archive.