Natural History Cabinet, Birds

A boy and girl, accompanied by their dog, approach an enormous cage holding a dozen birds. They are inside of an ornate maze garden, hemmed by hedgerows, with a fountain in the distance. Although the birds are outside, they are housed within a display cage and set in a natural environment obviously sculpted by humans, suggesting an arrangement for the education of the children parallel to the book's organization of nature to assist curious young naturalists. The frontispiece is an interlocutor gesture that connects book and world as educational spaces, which present two ways of "reading" nature. The organization and display of nature within the book parallels the activity outside of the book of organizing and cultivating plants and animals in the world.