8vo. 150, 153-154, 151-349pp, [16]. Leaf K4 misbound. Later gilt-tooled diced russia, all edges red. Rubbed, joints starting, some scoring to boards; but an attractive copy. Endpapers browned, ink-stamp of the Lawes Agricultural Trust to FEP, contemporary ownership inscription to title page: 'Johannis Alardi x Armcoruf(?) / Gronopol. 1544. empts.' marginal worm- track throughout the majority of text-block, closed tear to lower corner of final leaf of index.

The Rothamsted library copy of an early edition of the first complete Latin translation, by Saxon humanist Janus Cornarius (c. 1500-1558), of the Geoponica: the only extant Byzantine agricultural treatise, first published in 1538. A twenty-book compendium of agricultural lore, the Geoponica was compiled in the tenth-century at Constantinople during the Macedonian Renaissance and dedicated to emperor Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus. The anonymous work is often erroneously ascribed to seventh-century author Cassianus Bassus, whose collection, also titled Geoponica (itself derived from a fourth- century text by agricultural compiler Vindonius Anatolius), was integrated into the extant work. The primary sources for the text include Pliny's Naturalis Historia, the now lost writings of various Hellenistic and Graeco-Roman agriculture and veterinary authors, Carthaginian agronomist Mago, and works purporting to originate with Persian prophet Zoroaster. The Geoponica embraces all manner of 'agricultural' information, inter alia, celestial and terrestrial omina, viticulture, oleoculture, apiculture, veterinary medicine, and the construction of fish ponds.