PBA Galleries

 x, 347 pp. With five large folding engraved plates and a fine engraved title by Bartolomeo Nerici. (4to) period vellum.  First Edition. 

The Jesuit Leonardo Ximenes, one of the major scientific personalities of eighteenth-century Tuscany, wrote books on astronomy, hydraulics, geometry, physics, and mechanics. An accomplished hydraulic engineer, he conceived a grand plan to drain Lake Sesto (a.k.a. Lake Bientina), to alleviate the problem this large body of stagnant water and marshland was creating for the nearby town of Lucca. He proposed to construct a new channel, the Nuovo Ozzeri, to supplement the existing Canale d'Ozzeri, and thus create new farmlands. One of the plates shows a long cross-section of the Novo Ozzeri. The plan was never adopted however, and the area continued to be malaria-infected swamp and wetland until the middle of the 19th century. Included in the book are commentaries by Roger Joseph Boscovich and Eustachio Zanotti. The elegant engraved title shows two disappointed fishermen carrying their boat away from a field being ploughed. Riccardi II, 267. Poggendorff II, 1380