Magnes sive de arte magnetica opus tripartitum quo universa magnetis natura, eiusque in omnibus scientiis & artibus usus, nova methodo explicatur: …Rome, Biagio Diversin and Zanobio Masotti (printed by Vitale Mascardi), 1654. Folio. With engraved frontispiece by F. Valentius, letterpress title-page printed in red and black with engraved double publisher's device, full-page engraved plate with the portrait of Emperor Ferdinand IV, 34 mostly full-page engraved illustrations, 215 woodcut illustrations and about 50 letterpress tables. Contemporary overlapping vellum.

[32], 618, [28] pp.The third, last, best and only folio edition, much enlarged, thoroughly revised and with the engraved and many other illustrations newly made for it, of one of the major scientific works of the famous German Jesuit scholar, Athanasius Kircher (1602-1680), a truly encyclopedic work on magnetism. Kircher published his first major work, Ars Magnetica, in 1631. Only 63 pages in length, it extensively reports on his invention of a method for measuring magnetic power by means of a balance. The present work on magnetism was for Kircher an omnibus of scientific and also phantastic theories. He researched and measured magnetism in numerous situations and applied it to numerous fields of study, including cosmology, astronomy, geography, optics, electricity, medicine, metallurgy, animals, music, love, etc. He was the first to propose using magnetic declination to determine longitude.With the armorial bookplate of Hyacinth Theodore Baron (1706/07-1787), Dean of the Faculty of Medicine at Paris, and library stamps of Dr. Timoteo Riboli (1809-1895). Somewhat browned and with a small defect in the engraved title-page, but still in good condition, binding slightly stained.l De Backer & Sommervogel IV, cols. 1048-1049; Caillet 5780; DSB VII, pp. 374-378; Fletcher, Athanasius Kircher (2011), p. 565 (no. 5b) & passim; Poggendorff I, pp. 1258-1259; Wheeler Gift 116a.