“Never Was There So Compleate A History Of The Creatures As This Since The Daies Of Solomon, Who Writ The Story Of Beasts And Creeping things”

the claim referred to this book, 

Edward Topsell’s 1658 The History of Four-Footed Beasts and Serpents, published more than thirty years after its author’s death and considered the first major illustrated work on animals printed in English, it actually combined his earlier work on four-footed beasts (1607) and serpents (1608), Topsell was not a naturalist himself (he in fact was a clergyman) and so heavily quotes the observations of others, in particular Thomas Moffett and Konrad Gesner, who, in turn, relied on classical authorities like Aristotle, Ovid, and Pliny, so as you might expect there were a few differences between the description and woodcuts in the book, which ran to over 1,000 pages, and the animals in real life, here are a few,

Prasyan ape

Cynocepale, or baboon

Camelopardal (giraffe)

Manticore

Lamia, but the book does have some illustrations that pass for the real animal as we know them, 

Lion

Badger

Elephant

Porcupine and of course, 

a Unicorn, the book was printed in London by E. Cotes, although it is easy to not take the illustrations seriously, it was a brave work armed with only second or third hand knowledge he did a what must be said a remarkable job of compiling so many creatures, Topsell’s work, as John Lienhard explains, “was actually an early glimmer of modern science. For all its imperfection, it represents a vast collection of would-be observational data, and it even includes a rudimentary rule for sifting truth from supposition.” to look at all 1,102 pages have a look here.