The text of this eBook has been preserved as similar as possible to its original form, including retention of archaic spellings, inconsistent use of diacritics, and occasional unusually wide gaps between sentences. However, some minor flaws have been corrected silently, such as missing or inconsistent punctuation.

The book has a somewhat complex structure comprising seven ‘books’ covering different aspects of science, followed by extensive explanatory notes and a comprehensive index. Numbers in the left margin identify lines of text that are referred to in the notes (e.g. p. 187, l. 27) or the index. The latter are enclosed in parentheses to differentiate them from page references, e.g. Pompey, 166 (3).

To help readers navigate the index, an alphabetic jump-table has been inserted at the beginning.

Footnotes have been numbered sequentially and moved to the end of the book.

New original cover art included with this eBook is granted to the public domain.