Haha, more legs in the tail. :-D
Interesting that it is labeled "Canter".
How long are you going to keep us in suspense?
Very nice. Is it vonden or "vouden" (forest?) ?
Any scorpio out there?
Is this something from Westfalen?
It's "Dis ist von den Louwen".
It was common for them to mush words together like "vonden".
It's basically just saying that this is about the lion.
I was about to go to bed but then I thought it wouldn't be nice of me to leave it like this for the night
The lion is from Lauber's only Buch der Natur that's not digitized, the Heidelberg one.
The red-and-green-leg-tailed-canter is from this MS:
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'nite
Alas, the scorpion is totally different: You are not allowed to view links.
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So that's an identical lobster in two Lauber manuscripts, written within a few years from each other, perhaps even the same year (it is not always clear how accurate the dating information for an individual MS is).
As Spyra writes, the one in the "Buch der Natur" is out of place as it is not the species that belongs there.
The number of legs remains a problem. The text of the Buch der Natur says it has eight legs and it has scissors at the end. The drawing reflects this, while in reality it should have eight legs plus the two big ones. The Voynich MS cancer got this part right...
I don't have much time today but I'll quickly explain before I have to leave. I got an answer from the first of two specialists I contacted, Prof. Lieselotte Saurma. She called the whole Lauber thing an "intriguing and fascinating problem."
"The motives of the couple, the gestures and the drapery in Lauber Illustrations and your gemini have indeed some similiarities and I can imagine that your illustrations go back to Alsatian models. But these motives are so general that Lauber can be no more than a shadow from a missing link."
Lauber as the "shadow of a missing link" is basically how I feel about it as well. I think the shadow, i.e. influence, is there undeniably spread throughout Lauber's works, but it is the shadow of "something else". I think Lauber normalized and polished this missing link a bit, because it was clearly flawed. My hope is that through the study of proper crossed arms imagery on the one hand and Lauber's potential sources on the other, we might get closer.
She also shared some images that are not available online, especially from the Heidelberg Buch der Natur which was the focus of my inquiry. I attach "vonder schorppfen" for your viewing pleasure.
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![[Image: fische.png]](http://wwwhomes.uni-bielefeld.de/mwille2/VMS/fische.png)