Curious Creatures in Zoology — A Reader’s Guide

Compilation as Authorial Method

Ashton's method is announced in his preface: 'I say compiled it, for I am fonder of letting old authors tell their stories in their old-fashioned language, than to paraphrase it.' This is not a modern synthesis but a curated anthology. The excerpts show him quoting Giraldus Cambrensis on the barnacle goose at length, including the detail that 'the eggs are not impregnated in coitu.' Ashton adds only a brief note that Giraldus does not mention the tree-growing variant. The effect is to foreground the source's own reasoning and credulity, not to correct it. The reader encounters the medieval mind directly, filtered only by Ashton's selection.

Diction of Wonder and Authority

The language of Ashton's sources oscillates between marvel and matter-of-fact. Giraldus writes of barnacle geese produced 'in a manner contrary to nature, and very wonderful,' yet he claims to have seen 'more than a thousand minute bodies' hanging from timber. The monster of Ravenna is described with clinical precision: 'a horn on the top of its head, two wings, was without arms, and only one leg like that of a bird of prey.' This blend of the fantastic and the empirical is characteristic of pre-modern natural history. Ashton does not ironize; he lets the juxtaposition stand.

Visual Evidence and Wood Engravings

Ashton's 130 illustrations are integral to the work's argument. The excerpt includes a description of a harpy 'of bird and woman' and a siren from Pompeii, with the note that the image is 'taken from Pompeii.' The woodcuts are not decorative but evidential: they purport to show what the texts describe. Ashton's preface notes that sailors who saw sea monsters were 'not draughtsmen' and that their 'effigies came to be exceedingly marvellous.' The engravings thus embody the same tension between observation and imagination that the texts do.

Structure and the Reader's Journey

The book is organized by creature, moving from land to sea, from classical to medieval. The excerpts show a progression from harpies and sirens (classical) to the Ravenna monster (1511) to the barnacle goose (medieval). Ashton's transitions are minimal; he lets the chronology and geography of belief create a loose narrative. The reader moves from the Mediterranean to Northern Europe, from myth to 'observed' prodigy. This structure mirrors the expansion of European travel and the accumulation of 'strange things' that Ashton's preface promises to rescue from oblivion.

Ashton's Curious Creatures rewards readers who enjoy primary sources over interpretation. The book is best approached as a cabinet of curiosities: dip into any chapter, read the quoted passages aloud, and examine the engravings. The authorial voice is that of a collector, not a critic. For those interested in the history of science or folklore, the work offers direct access to the raw material of pre-modern zoological belief, unmediated by modern skepticism.

There are evenings when I revisit John Ashton's Curious Creatures, its old woodcuts like patient friends. The way he trusted his sources, preserving their gentle credulity, reminds me of another quiet volume, Shoulder to shoulder — Reading Notes, where margins hold similar loyalties. Both keep faith with voices long gone, and I find that companionship enough.