P R E F A C E .

Those who are like Aesop’s cock. Book 1 of On the Parts of Animals, chapter 1. The wonders of God are seen in even the smallest things.

But if anyone thinks it beneath a great and serious man to write about birds and the matters pertaining to them, he seems to me to be seriously hallucinating and to be wandering, as the saying goes, entirely off the path. The spirit of those who, scorning these things, devote themselves only to those sciences which serve solely to increase household wealth and who look everywhere for utility and profit, is ungenerous and base; they should surely be judged like Aesop’s cock, who preferred a grain of barley to a gem he had found, because he did not know the gem's use. Therefore, since there is no animal—as Aristotle original: "teste Aristotele" testifies—so small or so lowly that something rare, hidden, or rather (if I may say so) something of the divine is not seen within it, it follows that the knowledge of birds—which are perfect creatures and full of wonders—

All these things, studious reader, proceed from a good heart and a most eager desire to serve the republic of letters republic of letters: the international community of scholars and intellectuals in any way possible. I have long wished to publish these and other most useful things for you, but I could not because of the enormous costs. However, if you receive this with a good and benevolent mind, I shall gird myself with a more eager spirit and will for my remaining late-night labors lucubrations: scholarly works produced by intensive study, literally "by lamplight", the task of publishing which Francesco de' Franceschi original: "Franciscus Senensis Typographus," a Sienese printer active in Venice, of his own accord, has undertaken, if life allows.

A wide horizontal ornamental woodcut band featuring symmetrical floral and leafy scrolls. In the center and at the ends are decorative medallions or cartouches containing stylized faces or masks.