
          Combles. Trattato della coltura de' persici. Venezia, Nella stamperia 
Graziosi, 1792.

The translator of this work has not been fully identified, but
was probably Marco Antonio Lastri, who rendered many French books into
Italian, but whose name does not appear in the titles of some of his
own best-known writings, and may easily have been omitted from most of
his translations. The text gives no clew to the translator’s identity,
but one of the two appendixes in the volume: "Della coltivazione degli
alberi da frutto" (p.179-210) also appears as No.7 of Lastri's "Lezioni
di agricoltura." Moreover, it appears that his ’"Corso di agricoltura",
including the "Lezioni", was published in 1793 by the printer of this
Italian edition of Combles, Graziosi of Venice. This lends color to
the theory that Graziosi, with or without the author's permission, was
reissuing Lastri's works both generally and particularly.

No earlier edition of this Italian version of Combles has been located. 
Filippo Re, in his Dizionario Ragionato, implies that the Italian 
version was originally published ’"Parigi, 1766." This has not been
confirmed by any other authority, but if the work had been issued anonymously 
by Marco Lastri, it might have been rather ephemeral, and never
widely distributed in libraries. Even the edition of 1792 seems to be
extremely rare, and located in very few libraries.

(MFW -- May 3,1938)
        