2009 Exhibition

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The exhibition was opened in the library by Dr Martin Mansergh, T.D., Minister of State, on Tuesday the 30^th of June 2009, and continued until June 2010.

This exhibition contains books on the animal kingdom from the collection in Marsh's. The title comes from the nonsense poem about odd creatures in Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland. The books have splendid woodcuts and engravings,

There are books by famous 16^th and 17^th-century writers on natural history, covering exotic birds, butterflies and bees, elephants, horses, cats and tigers, reptiles and sea monsters.

The exhibition included many volumes by the Italian writer Ulisse Aldrovandi, whose magnificent work on natural history is regarded as the greatest zoological compendium of the early 17^th century.

The bird of paradise is shown in the massive encyclopaedia by the 16^th-century Swiss writer Conrad Gesner. Other well known early writers on natural history on display in this exhibition are Thomas Moffett, the Comte de Buffon and Gulielmus Rondelet. Rondelet’s ‘Monkfish’ and ‘Bishopfish’ are both illustrated wearing their full clerical attire! Oliver Goldsmith’s Animated nature is represented in the first Irish edition, published in Dublin in 1777.