Natural Magick... by PORTA, JOHN BAPTISTA (GIAMBATTISTA DELLA) - 1658: in twenty Books... wherein are set forth all the Riches and Delights of Natural Science. London (printed for Thomas Youmg, and Samuel Speed) 1658.

PORTA, JOHN BAPTISTA (GIAMBATTISTA DELLA). Natural Magick... in twenty Books... wherein are set forth all the Riches and Delights of Natural Science. London (printed for Thomas Youmg, and Samuel Speed) 1658.

(It was first published in this four book version in 1558. It is an uncritical compilation of the fantastical and the empirical, discussing subjects such as demonology, magnetism and the camera obscura. An expanded twenty book version was published in 1589.)

4:o. (about 277x184 mm.). (6), 1-284, 381-388, 393-409 (lacks pp. 125-126 and 251-52), (1 blank), (4, lacks last leaf) pp. Title printed in red and black (browned and worn in the margins, lacking engraved frontispiece), some woodcut illustrations in text.
Later (20th century) brown half leather, somewhat worn, spine in six compartments. Some foxing, about 15 leaves harder, some minor staining.

The missing frontispiece and leave supplied in facsimile.

First edition in English of Porta's Magiae naturalis libri viginti, originally published in 1558.
A compendium of 16th-century science and pseudo-science, as changing metals, of beautifying woman, of distillation, of perfuming, of artificial fires, of cookery, of fishing, fowling, hunting..., of invisible writing, of strange glasses (burning-glasses) and more.

See Ferguson, Bibliotheca Chemica II, pp. 215-217.