18th-century Venetian Sammelband containing five works on hydraulic governance and territorial preservation

5 work bound together in one volume, 4to (285 x 215 mm). Contemporary cardboard binding. Inked title on spine. Uncut. Three flyleaves at the beginnning and the end of the volume. Manuscript notes by the owner of the volume, who lists the titles of each work contained in the miscellany. Woodcut head- and tail-pieces and three woodcut printer's devices. All the quires of the last work are unopened. Minimally browned and foxed at places, overall a very good, unsophisticated copy with wide-margins.

The volume contains:

• Opinione legale del conte Giovanni Bujovich giureconsulto ed avvocato veneto. Venice, Angelo Pasinelli, 1766. XXXVI pp. 
• Lettere idrostatiche relative alla inalveazione del Po' nelle Valli di Comacchio, del nob. signor conte Giovanni Bujovich, socio della Reale accademia de' Georgofili di Firenze [...] Venice, Gaspare Storti, 1779. XXXII pp. Collation: A-D⁴. Lower margins shorter than the rest of the volume. 
• Osservazione sulla necessità che ha la Repubblica di Venezia di rivolgere le applicazioni del suo governo a riordinare alcuni fiumi principali del suo stato, del signor N.N. socio dell'Accademia dei Georgofili di Firenze, e di quelle di Agricoltura di Padova, di Rovigo, di Udine, di Belluno, e di Conegliano. [1775, deduced from the text]. XXXIV, [1] pp. Collation: π ² A-C⁴ D⁶. Often attributed to Simone Stratico (cf. Melzi, Dizionario di opere anonime e pseudonime di scrittori italiani, o come che sia aventi relazione all'Italia", v. II, p. 299); sometimes attributed to Giovanni Bujovich.  
• Dissertazione in risoluzione del problema proposto dall'accademia reale di Mantova l'anno 1777. Per le matematiche del signor N.N. Venice, Gaspare Storti, alla Fortezza, 1778. XII, XXXII, LXVII, [1 blank] pp. Collation: a⁶ A- D⁴ a⁴ A-G⁴ H⁶.  Attributed to Bujovich (see OCLC, 551539130). The work is divided into three sections: twelve introductory pages, the dissertation, and the addition of  the Lettere idrostatiche relative alla inalveazione del Po. Due to a binding error, the twelve introductory pages including the title page are repeated twice (in one sequence, though, pages 5-8 are missing). Manuscript author's dedication to a not-better identified "Nobile Sig. Cavaliere" on the title page.
• Saggio di un dilettante di matematica sulle equazioni di condizione  e sopra l'invenzione della brachistocrona. Attributed to Vittorio Fossombroni (1754-1844) by G. Melzi ("Dizionario di opere anonime e pseudonime di scrittori italiani, o come che sia aventi relazione all'Italia", III, p. 12): "Essay by Knight Vittorio Fossombroni written against Dt. Pietro Ferroni".

The volume opens with the Opinione legale (1766) by Count Giovanni Bujovich, a prominent Venetian jurist, advocate, and member of the prestigious Accademia dei Georgofili of Florence. Bujovich belonged to a distinguished family of Venetian-Montenegrin lineage and epitomized the Enlightenment ideal of the public intellectual, applying legal precision to civil and environmental infrastructure. His legal opinion sets the stage for his subsequent work, the Lettere idrostatiche [...]. In this treatise, Bujovich addresses the management of the Po River delta and the flooding of the Comacchio wetlands. Combining fluid mechanics with agrarian economics, he proposes hydrostatic solutions to prevent inundations, protect local fisheries, and reclaim fertile land for agriculture.

The third work, Osservazione sulla necessità che ha la Repubblica di Venezia di rivolgere le applicazioni del suo governo a riordinare alcuni fiumi principali del suo stato (1775), shifts the focus from local rivers to state-wide environmental policy. Though published anonymously, contemporary bibliographers (such as Melzi) have attributed it either to Bujovich himself or to the renowned mathematician and civil engineer Simone Stratico (1733–1824). Stratico, a professor at the University of Padua and one of the foremost hydraulic experts of the Adriatic region, argues that the survival of the Venetian Republic depended not on military strength, but on the systematic engineering of its riverways to prevent the siltation of the Venetian Lagoon.

The fourth treatise, a dissertation also attributed to Bujovich, demonstrates how theoretical mathematics was applied to practical statecraft. Written in response to a prize competition hosted by the Royal Academy of Sciences in Mantua, this work illustratates how mathematical models were used to solve real-world fluid dynamics problems.

The volume concludes with the anonymous mathematical essay Saggio di un dilettante di matematica sulle equazioni di condizione e sopra l'invenzione della brachistocrona, which bibliographies identify as the work of Count Vittorio Fossombroni: a brilliant Tuscan mathematician and engineer who would later become Prime Minister of Tuscany. Celebrated for his role in the monumental drainage of the Val di Chiana, in this highly sophisticated essay Fossombroni engages in polemic with the mathematician Pietro Ferroni, exploring the problem of the brachistochrone (the curve of fastest descent under gravity) and bridging the gap between theoretical calculus and practical physics.

The volume as a whole highlights the 18th-century Venetian approach to hydraulic governance and territorial preservation: water was not just a natural element, but also a political issue. For example, poor river management wasn't just a technical mistake; it meant ruined harvests, flooded farmland and the easier spread of diseases such as malaria. Ultimately, it allowed mud and silt to clog the Venetian Lagoon. The anonymous 'Knight', to whom the fourth work is dedicated, may have been the owner of the volume and the person who compiled this collection of related texts, including Bujovich's legal and hydrostatic proposals, Stratico's macroeconomic warnings regarding Venetian rivers and Fossombroni's cutting-edge mathematical physics.

IT\ICCU\UBOE\002879; IT\ICCU\UM1E\019854; IT\ICCU\PUVE\008572; IT\ICCU\UBOE\002866; IT\ICCU\UBOE\013649.

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