C. Plinii Secundi Historiae Mundi libri XXXVII

1561. PLINIUS (the elder) - C. Plinii Secundi Historiae Mundi libri XXXVII. Maiore, quam hactenus unquam, studio, !de, religione à vitiis quibus multiplici olim impressione contaminati suerant, vindicati. Adiectis ad marginem non minus doctis quàm succinctis Castigatiunculis, partim è vetustissimorum codicum collatione erutis, partim gravissimorum scriptorum autoritate, doctissimorúmque hominim iudicio aptè appositis: quas ad syncerioris lectionis indagationem, velut in tenebris accensa face, non parum lucis con!dimus allaturas. Una cum Indice totius operis copiosissimo, non poenitenda rursus accessione locupletato, locisque propemodum innumeris, quae cum autoris sensis non fatis congruebant, quàm accuratissimè restituto (WITH:) / In C. Plinii Secundi Naturalem Historiam Index Copiosissimus - 1561. Lugduni, apud Ioannem Frellonium (Lugduni, excudebat Symphorianus Barbier, see second part’s last page). Nineteenth-century half leather with titles, friezes and golden fillets on the spine, four raised bands, parchment boards but entirely covered in marbled paper, traces of ancient friezes on each of the fore-edges; folio, 40,8 x 28 cm; pp. (36) 679 (1b) (70) (1b), (185) (3b); traces of use to the binding, including the upper external corner of the worn front board, first white missing (probably applied to the title page’s verso as a reinforcement?), very small lack reinstated in the title page, some browned pages, others with slight stains and blooms, slight path of woodworm at the inner margin from sheet B4 on 16 sheets, away from the text, another at the lower outer corner from page 341 to 357, another from 605 to 637, at the inner margin from pag. 677 for 20 sheets, another walkway in the second part on the white margin of 8 sheets and one in 30 sheets of the final index, overall a good copy though, on still rustling paper. Double title page, each with a letterpress (crab and butter#y in an architectural frame with the motto “Matura”) engraved on copper, engraved initials, a couple of handwritten notes from the seventeenth century. Imposing and uncommon Lyon edition of the mid-sixteenth century of the famous Natural History of Pliny the Elder, edited by Johannes Nicolaus Victorius and Sigmund Gelen