Worm, Ole.   

Museum Wormianum. Seu historia rerum rariorum, tam naturalium, quam artificialium, tam domesticarum, quam exoticarum, quae Hafniae Danorum in aedibus authoris servantur...

Leiden, Elzevir, 1655 1655 Folio (350 x 220 mm), pp [xii] 389 [3], with engraved portrait of Worm, double-page engraved plate view of the museum, 139 woodcuts and 13 engravings in text; a few leaves slightly browned, otherwise a very bright, crisp in contemporary vellum.

First edition of this catalogue of the leading North European Wunderkammer, assembled by the Danish physician Ole Worm (1588-1654). 'A gifted polymath, Worm collected many types of objects, especially those of natural history and man-made artifacts, which he carefully arranged and classified, following a rigorous method... His museum, which became one of the great attractions of Copenhagen, included the skull of a narwhal properly described; previously narwhal tusks had been supposed to be the horns of unicorns. There were many prehistoric stone implements, but Worm did not conclude that they belonged to a stone age and were artifacts; he labelled them "Cerauniae, so called because they are thought to fall to earth in flashes of lightning"- a belief widely held at that time. This is curious, because Worm recognized the tip of a stone harpoon point embedded in a marine animal found in Greenland, and also knew of stone tools and weapons from America. On his death, Worm's museum passed to King Frederik III and was installed in the old castle at Copenhagen' (Glyn Daniel in DSB).

The portrait of Worm is engraved by Wingendorp after van Mander. Wingendorp also engraved the large plate showing the museum. 'The splendid double-page view of the museum shows the actual arrangement of the specimens on open shelves with boxes and trays of shells, minerals, stones, rare earths and animal bones, the larger specimens on higher shelves mixed up with bronzes, antiquities and ethnographic objects, racks of spears and utensils, horns and antlers and stuffed animals hang on the walls and from the ceiling are suspended large fish, a polar bear and a Greenland kayak' (Grinke, From Wunderkammer to museum). Some of the woodcuts, especially of New World plants, are taken from Elzevir's stock and were also used in his edition of Piso and Marggraf's Historia naturalis Brasiliae, 1658. Other illustrations were drawn under Worm's supervision. These include one of the text engravings, the first illustration of a great auk.

 Provenance: signatures on title: 'Augustus Ludovicus C.B.' crossed out; 'Brandani Augusti Conendingii[?] 1679' Nissen ZBI 4473; Cobres p. 98 n. 2; Willems 772; Eales 456