BRUNO, Vincenzo.

In Napoli, per Tarquino Longo, .1603

Folio, 10 leaves, 291 pages, 30 leaves (index). Large armorial engraving on the title, woodcut initials and ornaments. Two small and very old library stamps on the title, and a few tiny (2 mm.) holes, small stain on two preliminary leaves. Contemporary limp vellum, a bit marked, lettered in manuscript along the spine, the three doeskin thongs of the binding present but broken, and the book now loose in its case.

SOLE EDITION. A rare encyclopaedic work, arranged alphabetically (by word headings in the margins), on “inventions”, covering every item known to the author, sometimes in brief explanations and sometimes in longer essays. Many of the subjects relate to the arts and sciences. Among the subjects which are more extensively dealt with are oil wells and fire (pp. 21–25), cheese and milk (pp. 54–55), comets (pp. 62–63), lightning (pp. 95–96), herbs (pp. 119–120), horology (pp. 120–121), medicine (pp. 151–155, and elsewhere under specific subjects), the tides (pp. 164–165), eyeglasses (pp. 183–184), etc. Cicognara (no. 1605) gives a description of this book, and Ferguson (Notes on histories of inventions, part 2, p. 21) quotes it at the head of a list of similar works given by Beckmann, but had not seen it. One copy in NUC.

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