Emperor Frederick II of Hohenstaufen/ Casey A. Wood/ F. Marjorie Fyfe - The Art of Falconry. Being the De Arte Venandi Cum Avibus of Frederick II of Hohenstaufen - 1961

A very RARE and beautiful facsimile book on "The Art of Falconry. Being the De Arte Venandi Cum Avibus of Frederick II of Hohenstaufen".
Colour frontis, half title, title, original green cloth with gilt decoration on spine a bit faded, double column text, 186 illustrative plates, biblio, glossary in Latin and English, ancient water sign on fore edge but almost no sign inside, copy in very good condition otherwise. A definitive work on falconry and ornithology written in the 1240s by Frederick II (1194-1250), Holy Roman Emperor. With extensive introductory material and appendices by the Canadian ophthalmologist and comparative zoologist C. A. Wood (1856-1942), who studied animal vision, especially that of birds, and was first published in 1943 by Stanford University Press. This book contains the manuscripts and editions of the De Arte Venandi Cum Avibus, as well as six books on the art of falconry. There is evidence to prove that falconry was familiar to the people of China, India, Assyria, Sumeria, and other provinces of Babylon, Egypt, and Persia thousands of years before Rome came into existence.
Scarce.