Photographs of the backside of engravings from the Compte de Buffon’s classic work Naturel History (1749 -1789). Due to the poor conservation of the engravings, the grease in the inks bleeds through the paper leaving a ghost image. Buffon belonged to that wonderful period where science sought to free itself from fantasies. But old habits die hard and there are many imagined aminals that have crept into the book and the images of apes display surprisingly human expressions. Like paintings found in the lost cave of the imagination, the shadow images convey deep symbolic associations.