The Ursine Rose, or the Sun

If constant INDUSTRY FORMS the bear, then truly, so that nothing of elegance and beauty might be lacking to this URSINA ROSA of mine, cultivated now for so many years, beyond those things which I have brought forth from manifest sense and concluded with firm reason, I have also summoned adornment from elsewhere. Therefore, at the end of the Work, I offer for the Reader's consideration many things concerning the nature of the Sun, the stars, and the heavens—whether IGNEOUS, CORRUPTIBLE, or finally LIQUID—from both sacred and profane authority, both ancient and recent, with the very sources of the writers opened and brought into the middle. Ornithologists write, and those dedicated to bird-catching confirm, that sterile female partridges steal eggs from fertile mothers out of a desire for offspring, and by incubating the stolen eggs, they hatch foreign chicks. These chicks, having heard the voice of the natural mother, recognize it, and thus, having immediately abandoned the stepmother, follow their true parent. Many have hitherto incubated this solar phenomenon as if it were an egg born from the very brain of Jupiter, and they have hatched their own wisdom like a new Pallas. Many voices have been heard and are heard of those enticing the solar offspring to themselves. There is ONE TRUE MOTHER, there is ONE TRUTH of the phenomenon: May the one whom the solar phenomenon follows be the true author of the phenomenon, and may you, equitable Reader, be the JUDGE of whom it truthfully follows. Rome, in the House of the Society of JESUS, professed in the year 1629, on the 3rd of the Nones of July July 5, 1629.

A decorative typographical ornament (cul-de-lampe) centered on the page, arranged in the shape of a cross. It is composed of symmetrical, intricate scrolling vine and leaf motifs, with fleur-de-lis patterns forming the four points.