Originating in northern Italy, this mid-fourteenth-century manuscript contains 488 miniatures, which were possibly drawn at a Venetian workshop, with explanatory titles in Latin and French. It represents one part of a two volume compendium on medicinal plants, minerals and mining techniques, and various animals. Much of this material is drawn from the Circa Instans, a twelfth-century medical textbook by Matthaeus Platearius, a physician from Salerno. The other volume, a manuscript likely containing the compendium's text, is lost.