J.W. Buel’s Sea and Land (1887) is a gloriously bizarre book. I love and adore it. It purports to be a natural history of all the plants and animals on Earth, from both before and after the Great Flood. What it turns out to be is more of a chronicle of every possible way to be killed by animals in the wilderness. I know that the law of the jungle is to eat and be eaten, but Buel takes this to a comical extreme. He claims he’s compiled the most exhaustive scientific data and first-hand accounts but, I dunno, just open to a random page and read a bit and see if he doesn’t strike you as either gullible or a sensationalist, or both (he is, at least, not so bad as Edward Topsell).
The real draw is the 300 or so engravings. The vast majority of these, like the Monster Manual, depict animals and monsters fighting or devouring people. Elephants, tigers, saw fish, you name it, it’s in here, killing some poor fool. My very favorite is the entirely made up Yah-te-veo, a man-eating tentacle plant that I have definitely turned into a monster for my D&D campaign and yes, it nearly ate someone. When people aren’t available, the pictured animals are happy to eat each other. One gruesome melee has a collection of animals of the African Savannah literally at each others throats. Another favorite depicts some sort of giant tree crab killing a goat and hauling into the boughs for a meal. There’s also an illustration of a caveman fighting a plesiosaur, because of course there is. One violent tableau after another. It’s amazing.
Oh, and in the middle, it reprints Coleridge’s Rime of the Ancient Mariner, complete with Dore’s engravings for some reason?
I’ve found very little biographical information on Buel, though I’ve admittedly not tried very hard. He was an Illinois-born journalist and a world traveler (he definitely visited Siberia, among other far-flung locales) though I can’t help but wonder if he actually saw any animals while abroad. His accounts and the book’s illustrations seem like a fever dream of the sort that might be cooked up by a person who has never left his house.
A word of thanks to Zac Bir. Not content to enjoy the digital version on Archive.org, I bought a tattered copy of Sea and Land which he painstakingly and beautifully rebound. Now at least this copy with be around to stupefy future generations. He’s compiled an amazing, detailed post about the process that you should check out! This thing has staples in it?!
