A NEW ASPECT OF A RENAISSANCE GEOLOGIST: GEORGII AGRICOLA'S DE ANIMANTIBUS SUBTERRANEIS (1549 AND 1556)

Georgii Agricola (1494-1555) is well known for his geological publications, especially his masterpiece, De Re Metallica (1556), over 500 pages of text illustrated with more than 250 beautiful and instructive woodcuts. Historians of medicines also have studied him for his work on disease. But in 1549, he published a short treatise on animals known to exist in the subsurface. This essay is a compendium of what Greek, Latin, and medieval authorities wrote about these animals, but, unlike many of his contemporaries, Agricola supplemented those writings with his own observations, and he posed questions about the existence of some of the fanciful beasts described by his forbearers. Of special interest to paleontologists and zoologists is an “index” at the end where Agricola groups animals by their form of locomotion—walking, crawling, swimming, flying, burrowing—as well as the occasional use of binomens, following in the footsteps of several contemporary herbalists. De Animantibus Subterraneis appeared again as an appendix to De Re Metallica, an updated reprint of the 1549 work set in a folio format. Curiously, when Lou Henry Hoover and Herbert Hoover published their masterful annotated English translation of De Re Metallica in 1912, they did not include the essay on animals. Consequently, it is not well known to English-speaking scholars, although it was cited by some of Agricola's contemporaries, including Conrad Gesner. Then why has Agricola's essay been ignored? Agricola's De Re Metallica was copiously illustrated, as were the works of Gesner and Ulisse Aldrovandi. Thus, even those not fluent in Latin could, with some effort, understand these authors' intentions by reference to the pictures. But not so with Agricola's De Animantibus Subterraneis, which was not illustrated. However, neglecting De Animantibus Subterraneis makes Agricola too much of a specialist, whereas as a Renaissance scholar his interests spanned many disciplines.