Decorated Capitals

I recently posted some pictures of embossed covers on old natural history books. Here are some more examples of Victorian or Edwardian book production - decorated capitals at the beginning of chapters. These came from some battered pages of a book of wild flowers, that was falling apart and had lost its covers, so I don't know the title, author or the date of publication. But they are delightful examples of decorated typography whose origins can be traced back to the highly decorated capitals in illuminated manuscripts and are an art form that is seldom seen in today's books.