Each plate renders the bird at life-size, so a pelican fills the full width of the sheet as it once filled the estuary sky.
Teams of colorists hand-applied watercolor over the aquatint, layer by layer, preserving the exact ochres and greens the master engraver specified.
The handmade wove rag has deepened from pale cream to warm buff over two centuries, and that patina is itself part of the record.
Botanical foregrounds and branching compositions place each species in the ecology it once inhabited, not against a blank field.