A small decorative woodcut ornament at the top of the page featuring symmetrical foliage and floral scrolls.

OFFICIAL EXHORTATION

AND INVITATION

TO LIBERALLY EQUIP

THE LIBRARY AND MUSEUM

OF THE IMPERIAL ACADEMY

OF NATURAL CURIOSITIES.

TO THE BENEVOLENT READER

THE PRESIDENT OF THE IMPERIAL LEOPOLDINE-CAROLINE

ACADEMY OF NATURAL CURIOSITIES.

Among other things which have hitherto seemed to be missing for the convenience of our Society, it was surely not the least that it had nowhere an appropriate place to acquire and furnish the equipment necessary for common use. Indeed, the Academy itself, under the auspicious emblem of the Argonauts the legendary Greek heroes who sailed in search of the Golden Fleece, has diligently sought far and wide and has generously distributed the rich spoils of its discoveries to the learned world through compiled commentaries; yet it could not find a firm station for itself where it might establish, for the public utility of its colleagues, a kind of armory, that is, a LIBRARY and MUSEUM. Plans frequently discussed regarding this matter failed for various reasons, about which it is pointless to speak further now. Meanwhile, this desire has increased all the more as good men have more frequently demanded that a storehouse exist somewhere, from which they might seek aids for their own observations and commentaries destined for our Ephemerides journal/daily records, or illustration or confirmation, and by the considered and explored equipment of the same, might better foresee what thereafter