A wide rectangular decorative headpiece composed of repeating rows of typographical ornaments including scrolls and fleurons.

TO

THE READER

A decorative typographical divider with symmetrical scrollwork.

A circular historiated woodcut drop cap for the letter 'C', depicting a bird (a crow) standing among reeds on a riverbank with a landscape in the background.
THEY SAY that the nature of the Corvus crow/raven is such that, once it has obtained food, it immediately reveals it with an awkward croak, and by doing so, brings spontaneous danger upon itself as well as upon the prey it has acquired, a danger it might have avoided had it preferred to enjoy its windfall in silence. Hence, the lyric poet aptly remarks:

If the crow could feed in silence, it would have
More food, and much less strife and envy.

The critic easily grants pardon to this bird, which follows the instinct of nature. However, the inconsiderate loquacity of a man in revealing his own secrets is not free from blame, nor from merited punishment or reproach. For lapses subject to human will obtain indulgence more slowly. For who compels you to reveal what is yours? And if even the premature revelation of one's own secrets does not escape the just mark of imprudence, what shall we think of those who are eager to bring forth the property of others, and who usurp it as if it were their own, and drive the legitimate masters from their possessions? Indeed, most humane Reader, just as I have never looked upon my own small and few inventions with magnificence, nor thrust them impetuously upon others—on the contrary, I have rather covered and neglected them—so, if I judge the works of others worthy of commendation, I willingly adorn them with their own praise. But to claim them for myself, even if I could, I truly disdain; not because they are base, but because they are another's. I am, in this, a rival to the nature and sagacity of the URSINAE bear/Ursine; for just as that animal lives by its own juice, it also rightly usurps that [food] for itself as its own, IPSE ALIMENTA MIHI I am my own sustenance. This URSINUM Ursine symbol I also claim for myself in this URSINA ROSA Ursine Rose, without arrogance and without injury to anyone. From it, I weave garlands from my own leaves, not another's; I press the juice and rose-oil by my own sweat and labor, not another's. For as I bring forward—arranged in order by me—the courses of the solar spots of Father Georgius Schoenberger and Father Carolus Malapertius, along with my own Observations, it is only fair that those who once drank in the first doctrine and instruction of this phenomenon from me at Ingolstadt should now receive some fruit for their industry, while I illustrate their observations with mine, and their merits themselves...