Although written in the sixteenth century, this first edition printing was edited and published by Giovanni Maria Lancisi (1654–1720) in 1717. By as early as 1574, Mercati (1541–1593), director of the Vatican botanical garden, had prepared a catalog of the collection of fossils and minerals in the Vatican collection assembled under Pope Sixtus V. The majority of illustrations in the text are from the original sixteenth-century engraved plates prepared for Mercati's catalog, rediscovered by Lancisi, and printed here for the first time. This work survives as a record of an important Renaissance mineralogical and palaeontological collection and an example of eighteenth-century Italian fine printing. Includes 21 full-page engraved plates.