PREFACE

—ture, powers, and properties original: "viribus ac facultatibus." In Renaissance natural history, "powers" often referred to the medicinal or hidden virtues believed to reside within stones and fossils., it is worthwhile to establish a discourse. I have, however, included illustrations not of all, but of as many as I was able to obtain at this time; most of them are accurately and vividly depicted from the stones I keep at home myself, while others, indeed, were sent by friends, especially Johannes Kentmann Johannes Kentmann (1518–1574) was a German physician and mineralogist. His catalog of 1,600 specimens was one of the most systematic collections of the 16th century., not only a physician of outstanding learning, but a man most skilled in all natural matters and a most excellent gentleman: to whom I credit the greatest part of this knowledge. For from him I received very many of the objects themselves, as well as many descriptions and figures: which, as becomes an honorable man original: "virum ingenuum." Gessner emphasizes the "Republic of Letters" etiquette where scholars were expected to publicly credit their sources., I acknowledge as freely as I do gladly, since I hold him in the highest regard and count him in the foremost place among my closest friends.

I wrote this first book, however, with a certain extemporaneous haste, having stolen this time—as if for play and recreation—from our History of Plants original: "historia stirpium." Gessner's massive botanical project was his life's work; he views this book on fossils as a brief diversion or "recreation" by comparison. begun long ago, so that men studious of these matters in different