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Cover Legend: Louis Renard (1678-1746), "Guitar Fish" (upper), "Left-eye Flounder" (lower), Plate XLIV: hand-painted engraving, Natural History of the Rarest Curiosities of the Seas of the Indies, Amsterdam, 1718. One of the few pre-Linnaean tomes on fish to be published in vibrant color, Louis Renard's book is a real rarity. With only six extant copies consisting of 100 colored engravings of 460 specimens, it includes 416 fish, 40 crustaceans, two grasshoppers, one dugong, and one mermaid. These fanciful creatures, considered scientifically accurate at the time of publication, are now relegated to the realm of surrealistic folk art. However, some have championed his work as valuable additions to natural history. Baron Cuvier, one of Renard's fans, wrote in his classic, Histoire Naturelle des Poissons (1828), "these drawings are indispensable, either for providing the natural colors of known species, or for helping to recognize new forms." Renard himself was a very colorful figure: a member of the Amsterdam Guild of Booksellers, a spy for the British Crown, and an agent of King George I (to whom his book is dedicated). On-the-spot drawings and accompanying descriptions were sent to him by an artist named Samuel Fallours, in the employ of the Dutch East India Company, stationed in Ambon (now Jakarta). Renard added his own embellishments, including faces, arbitrary appendages, and decorative details. Guitar Fish (upper) was originally labeled as "Monster fished from the Straits of Baguala near Amboine in 1709. It was three and a half feet long." Left-eye Flounder (lower) was described as, "the flounder of the Alforeese coast is very good with all sauces some are a foot long and were first found in the Molucca Islands approximately twenty years ago." Image courtesy of the MBL/WHOI Library, www.mblwhoilibrary.org; text by Ann Weissmann, exhibitions curator.