Willem Piso and Georg Markgraf’s Historia Naturalis Brasiliae references to birds of the East Indies

Record summary

Although chiefly a work on Dutch Brazil, Historia Naturalis Brasiliae participated in the seventeenth-century circulation of natural-history descriptions, names, and illustrations that were compared with East Indian and Pacific animals. Its relevance is methodological: early modern readers often treated reports of unusual birds, bats, and flying animals as interchangeable across distant regions. The work can help trace how “marvels” entered printed zoology, but it is not itself a Pacific encounter report. Any Pacific connection must be demonstrated through cited correspondence, reprints, or later compilations rather than assumed from the book’s broad influence.