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PKEFACE. 



rpHE Book of ISTabath^an Agricultuke 

 . was first introduced to the notice of 

 Europe by St. Thomas Aquinas, towards the 

 middle of the thirteenth century, though 

 it had already been cited by Moses Mai- 

 monides in the More Nevochim some hun- 

 dred years previously, from whence, no 

 doubt, it had become known to most of the 

 learned Spanish Jews who, at the period, 

 shed so great a lustre upon Hebrew Litera- 

 ture and Biblical Science. 



Startling as it is to find in its pages 

 mention of a literature and civilization so 



