Antwerp, Guillaume Simon, 1567. 8vo (16.3 x 10.3 cm). Title page with woodcut publisher's device, [xiv], 473, [xxi], [i] pp.; woodcut portrait of the author. Plantin press printer's leaf in rear. Contemporary full embossed vellum with portraits of Martin Luther and Philip Melanchton.

A beautifully bound copy, in so-called monastic binding, with a pictural central panel, and an embossed date, and in particular of a type typical for several book binders in and around Wittenberg. Monastic, here, is in fact a misnomer, as the portraits are of two of the most famous 16th century church reformers, and Lutheran monasticism is an oxymoron. The work itself, was written by the Dutch medical doctor and philosopher, Levinus Lemnius (1505-1568), who endeavoured to describe and explain many well-known natural and medical phenomena that lay people regularly encounter in their lives. His explanations are a typical renaissance mix of careful observation, logic and ancient superstition. This is the second, enlarged edition, printed at the famous Plantin press, and described on the title page as "The hidden miracles of nature, and various documents of things, explained by probable reason and artful conjecture. In addition to the former, which have been very thoroughly reviewed and enriched in many places, two new books are added, adorned with a wonderful variety of things and opinions, which will be of use and delight to the studious and avid reader. The list of the work, and the enumeration of the chapters, will exhibit the taste of all". Provenance: inscribed in the top margin of the title page, in an old hand, Ex libris Henrici Vincisla, and in the lower margin, in a different old hand, Bibliotheca Bresticensis (?). Parts of two printed leaves from an illustrated edition of the gospel of John used as endpapers. Some worming to the boards, and in the gutter of few text sections; damp-stain to the fore margins of a few sections, otherwise very good, complete. Not in Brunet.