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The work assembles systematic observations on animals, insects, and trees, combining natural history with practical notes. It surveys insect forms and habits, including bees, silk‑producing worms, spiders, and parasitic species, and discusses reproduction, classification, diseases, and useful products like honey and silk. It then examines animal anatomy in detail, limb by limb and organ by organ, comparing organs, vital functions, and bodily peculiarities across species. Later sections catalogue trees and exotic plants, describing aromatic gums, spices, frankincense, myrrh, and methods for producing and testing unguents and perfumes, and noting their uses and regions of origin.
Arabia, which is in the vicinity of these islands, requires that we should make some distinction in its vegetable products, seeing that here the various parts of trees which are employed for useful purposes are the root, the branches, the bark, the juices, the gum, the wood, the shoots, the blossoms, the leaves, and the fruit.