Rerum naturalium historia, nempe Quadrupedum Insectorum Piscium variorumque marinorum Corporum Fossilium Plantarum exoticarum ac praesertim Testaceorum exsistentium in Museo Kircheriano, edita ... A P. Philippo Bonannio ... novisque observationibus locupletata a J.A. Battarra. PARS PRIMA.
Eur 7,500 / USD 8,200
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Roma, Zempelliano, 1773. Folio (380 x 255mm). pp. xl, 260, with 1 fine engraved allegorical frontispiece, 1 engraved title vignette showing a cabinet and 2 scientists with a magnifying glass, 10 engraved vignettes in the text and 51 engraved plates. Contemporary half calf, gilt ornamented and lettered spine in 5 compartments, marbled sides.
"Very scarce. Revised and edited by Giuseppe-Antonio Battarra. Kircher, the great German Jesuit scholar, had formed during his life a magnificent collection of antiquities and natural history specimens. When he died in 1680, the collection was bequeathed to the Collegio Romano. Although Buonanni published a one volume account of the collection in 1709, this much enlarged work is the definitive edition. The volumes cover mainly zoology, paleontology, and conchology, and are superbly illustrated. It is one of the most important accounts of a seventeenth century scientific cabinet. Volume 1 divides the text into classes of (1) quadrupeds, (2) reptiles and insects, (3) fossils, minerals and stones, (4) fish and sea creatures, and (5) apparatus. Pages 94-152 describe the mineralogical specimens, including gold, silver, copper, iron, lead, tin, mercury, antimony, magnets, marcasite, salt, sulfur, amber, dendrites, fossils, the Philosopher's stone, etc. Some of these are illustrated on plates XXXV-XXXVI" (C. Schuh, Bibliography of Mineralogy). Volume 2, not present here, deals almost exclusively with shell and bivalve descriptions. A few leaves with some worming at the lower margin. A very fine copy.
B.M.(N.H.), 287; Nissen ZBI, 2199.