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Jardine himself was a gifted naturalist and artist. Many of his original water colors are in the Natural History Museum, London and in the Royal Scottish Museum, Edinburgh. The hand colored engravings in The Naturalist's Library are based on paintings by some of the finest natural history artists known - some past, as Maria Sybilla Merian in the entomology section, and some contemporary, as William Swainson and Edward Lear in ornithology. Jardine himself wrote 14 of the volumes. He started issuing it in 1833 at six shilling a copy. It was an immediate success as never before had high quality colour reproductions been availabe at that price. The plates were hand coloured. There were about 30 plates per book and the first print run was 10,000 copies. 30 plates per book, 40 volumes, 10,000 print run make a mind-boggling 12 million plates to be coloured! He must have kept an army of colourists in work.