[BOSWELL (George)]:

A Treatise on Watering Meadows: A Treatise on Watering Meadows: Wherein are shewn Some of the Many Advantages arising from That Mode of Practice, particularly on Coarse, Boggy, or Barren Lands; and the Method of performing the Work. Also Remarks on a late Pamphlet upon that Subject. Illustrated with Five Copper-Plates. Fourth Edition, With Many Additions.

London: Printed for J. Debrett..., 1801. 8vo, 227 x 143 mms., pp. [viii], 134 [ 135 - 136], six plans on five folding engraved leaves at pages 34, 42, 55, 79, and 125, original wrappers, uncut; spine somewhat perished, and the binding a bit knocked about, but a good copy of a book as originally issued. Boswell first publshed this work himself in 1779, with a second edition appearing in 1790, followed by a third in 1792. The Monthly Review noticed the work in 1780: "One circumstance, which may possibly have regarded its progress [of making meadows] has been the want of some intelligent guide to direct the process.... Whatever information may be necessary in this business, seems to be amply supplied in the work before us. The Author, Mr. George Boswell, seems to be a sensible understanding man, who writes...with what he is really acquainted with. Whoever has land capable of being converted into water-meadows, though it were but a single acre, will do well to read the present treatise." In a recent monograph, "George Boswell of Puddletown (1735–1815): progressive farmer and author," Joseph Betty asserts, "George Boswell deserves to be remembered, not just as the author of an informative account of the techniques of watering meadows, but as a remarkable example of a practical farmer eager to embrace the latest farming advances, and as the respected correspondent and informant of some of the leading agricultural innovators of the time. His contributions to the early publications of the Bath and West of England Society and his experiments with ploughs, drills, threshing machines, new crops and improved methods make him of national rather than purely local importance."

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Book number: 9711

Catalogue: Agriculture

Keywords: agriculture irrigation prose

BOYS (John):

A General View of the Agriculture of the County of Kent; With Observations on the Means of it Improvement. Drawn up for The Consideration of the Board of Agriculture, and Internal Improvement, From the original Report transmitted to the Board; With additional remarks of several respectable country gentlemen and farmers.

London: Printed for G. Nicol...and sold by Messrs Robinson..., J. Sewell..., Cadell and Davies...., William Creech, Edinburgh; and John Archer, Dublin, 1796. 8vo, pp. xiv [xv - xvi Preface], 206 [207 Errata, 208 blank], including half-title, folding engraved coloured map before title-page, folding chart between pp. 126 and 127, 2 full-page engraved plates, original wrappers, uncut; ex-library, with library stamp in blind on front free end-paper, half-title, and title-page, library shelf marks in pencil and ink on verso of title-page, with ink slightly showing through to recto, spine reinforced, covers a little soiled. Boys (1749 - 1824) was a farmer in Kent and one of the commissioners for sewers for east Kent. He wrote this book at the request of the board of agriculture. The first edition of this book was published in Brentford in 1794. Goldsmiths 16572.

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Book number: 4648

Catalogue: Agriculture

Keywords: agriculture topography prose

CULLYER (John):

The Gentleman & Farmer's Assistant; Containing, first, Tables for Finding the Content of any Piece of Land, from dimensions taken in yards. Second, Tables, Shewing the Width required for an Acre, in any Square Piece of Land, From One to Five Hundred Yards, in Length. Third, Tables, Shewing the Number of Loads that will Manure an Acre of Land, By knowing the Distance of the Heaps. Fourth, a Table for Measuring Thatcher's Work, from one to sixty-four feet long, And from One to Twenty-Five Feet High. The Third Edition.

Norwich: Printed by and for Stevenson and Matchett, and J. Scatcherd..., [no date]. [c. 1800]. Square 12mo (in 6s), 122 x 112 mms., pp. 144 [145 -148 adverts], including half-title, contempoary sheepskin; front cover very slightly wormed, but a very good copy with the ownership inscription on the half-title, "Thomas Watson/ 1801." Also signed by Cullyer on page 7 with date of 27 July 1800. Cullyer published this work in 1795, and a second edition appeared in 1798. It continued to be reprinted and presumably used by and useful to gentlemen and farmers, as it was still in print as late as 1872. Early copies are uncommon: ESTC locates two copies (BL, Rutgers) of the 1795 first edition, eight of the second (BL Bodleian, Cambridge, Glasgow, London, Southampton, St. Andrews; Auckland Public); with this third edition located in BL, Bodleian, Cambridge, Rothamsted Experimental Station Library; The Czartoryski Library.

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Book number: 7330

Catalogue: Agriculture

Keywords: agriculture arithmetic prose

DONALDSON (James):

General View of the Agriculture of the County of Elgin or Moray, lying between the Spey and the Findhorn; including part of Strathspey, in the Counter of Inverness. With Observations on the Means of its Improvement. Drawn up for the Consideration of the Board of Agriculture and Internal Improvement.

London: Printed by C. Clarke, 1794. FIRST EDITION. 4to, pp. [3] - 43 [44 blank], library buckram; ex-library. This is one of a series of works on the agriculture of various Scottish counties that Donaldson wrote for the board of agriculture.

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Book number: 5631

Catalogue: Agriculture

Keywords: agriculture economics prose

ELLIS (William):

Ellis's Husbandry, Abridged and methodized: Comprehending the Most Useful Articles of Practical Agriculture.

London: Printed for W. Nicoll..., 1772. FIRST EDITION. 2 volumes. 8vo, 213 x 123 mms., pp. xx, 516; [viii], 528 [529 - 567, 568 blank], including half-title in volume 1, contemporary mottled calf, gilt spines, green morocco numbering labels; fragments of title labels, joints very slightly cracked but quite firm, corners worn, but a very good set, with G. E. Fussell's autograph on the verso of the front free end-paper in volume, below a contemporary inscription, "Henry Christopher Wise his Book/ with Profit improving, therein may be had/ Monday May 19th 1777." William Ellis (c. 1700 - 1758) wrote a number of books on agriculture, the value of which was sometimes disputed by farmers. The present work is an abridgment of an eight-volume The Modern Husbandman, published in instalments and finished by 1744, though some of Ellis's other works are referenced in the abridgment. In her ODNB entry on Ellis, Anne Pimlott Baker comments, "Ellis's Husbandry Abridged and Methodized, a compendium of all his works on agriculture, appeared in 1772 in two volumes, and the editor defended Ellis, claiming that many of his observations were valuable." A similar observation was made when the book was reviewed in The Monthly Review in 1772, with the reviewer describing Ellis as a "rough diamond" and his various work son agriculture forming a "rude, indigested heap." He concludes favourably, "[W]e shall readily acknowledge that we think the public is obliged to [the Editor] for what he has done; as the sterling sense of this writer, which lay scattered through so enormous a mass of dross, was certainly worth the extracting.... We could have wished that The Editor... had done something more than merely drawing his pen through the superfluous passages; that he had not been so very sparing of his notes; that he had attended more to the accuracy of his Author's language...." George E. Fussell (1889 - 1990), whose copy this was, alludes to the book on page 6 of More Old English Farming Books..., 1731 to 1793 (1950).

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Book number: 8250

Catalogue: Agriculture

Keywords: agriculture association copy prose

HUNTER (Alexander):

Georgical Essays.

York: Printed by A. Ward, for J. Dodsley..., 1777. 8vo, pp. [iv], 530 [531 - 534 Index, 535 adverts, 536 blank], uncut, recently recased in rather nasty quarter cloth, marbled boards, paper label. Hunter (1729 - 1800), a native of Edinburgh, practiced medicine in York from 1763 until his death. He published these essays in four volumes in 1770 - 1772, but this later edition adds essays not available in those volumes. Most of the essays are by Hunter, but other contributors include Adam Dickson, Robert Peirson, Thomas Percival, Richard Townley, and William Speechley.

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Book number: 2953

Catalogue: Agriculture

Keywords: agriculture prose

PARKINSON (John):

Paradisi in Sole Paradisus Terrestris. Or A Garden of all sorts of pleasant Flowers which our English ayre will permit to be noursed up: With A Kitchen Garden of all manner of herbes, rootes, and fruites, for meate or sauseused with us, And An Orchard of all sort of fruit-bearing Trees and Shrubbes fit for our Land. Together With the right ordering, planting, and preserving of them and their uses and vertue. Collected by John Parkinson Apothecary of London.

London. Printed by Tho Cotes, and are to be sold by John Grismond. 1635. Folio (in 6s), 302 x 193 mms., pp. [xii], 612 [613 - 628 indexes], woodcut portrait before page 1, 110 full-page engraved woodcuts, vignette woodcuts on page 294, vignette woodcut plans on pages 537 and 543, names in ink in margins of pages, 428, 530, 544, and margins of Indexes Fff3-6, armorial bookplate of George Arnold, "One of the Gentlemen of his Majesty's Most Honourable Privy Chamber" with the autograph "E. Lindsay" beneath, and below that "sum A. Oliveri van Oss MCMXXXVI," bound in contemporary sheepskin, spine gilt in compartments with two red leather labels laid down with joints skilfully restored; some slight water-staining, corner torn fomr pages 213-214 with loss of one letter on page 214, most leaves with print-through of woodcuts, title-page a bit stained as are last two leaves of index, and corner last leaf of index repaired, but for the most part a very good copy. The first three words on the title-page are, as every schoolboy knows, a pun on the author's surname. George Arnold George Arnold, of Ashby St. Ledgers (Northamptonshire, England), was made Gentleman of the Privy Chamber to George III c.1782 The apothecary and herbalist John Parkinson (1566/1577 - 1650) published this book in 1629, and John Ray described the book as "the most full and comprehensive book of that subject extant." Charles I conferred the title Botanicus Regius Primarius on Parkisnon after the first edition was published. It is probably one of the most impressive books with woodcut illustrations published in the early 17th century. For the record, the full-page woodcuts are found on the recto of the leaf with one exception, page 4 and 32 and thus on pages 29, 32, 37, 41,47, 51, 57, 59, 71, 75, 81, 85, 89, 93, 97, 101, 107, 113, 117, 121, 125, 131, 137, 142, 149, 151, 155, 159, 163, 169, 175, 183, 191, 197, 201, 205, 211, 219, 221, 227, 233, 237, 243, 251, 255, 259, 263, 267, 273, 279, 285, 291, 297, 305, 307, 313, 315, 321, 325, 331, 337, 343, 351, 355, 361, 307 [sic, for 367],373, 381, 387, 395, 399, 403, 409, 515, 419, 423, 429, 535, 443, 451, 457, 475, 481, 485, 487, 493, 497, 501, 505, 507, 511, 517, 519, 523, 527, 531, 559, 565, 569, 573, 577, 581, 585, 592, 597, 601, 605, and 609. It is worth noting that the Oxford DNB calls this work, Parkinson's Paradisi (1629), Parkinson's "first and best-loved book" and "the first work published on English gardening." Blanche Henrey 284 gives an issue for this year but with Richard Royston as the bookseller, noting that that issue "is made up of the sheets of the 1629 edition, with a letterpress title-page dated 1635 in addition to the woodcut title-page." Issues with John Grismond as the seller are found in Hunt Institute for Botanical Documentation, Lloyd Library, and South Carolina. See also Anna Parkinson's biography Nature's Alchemist: John Parkinson, Herbalist to Charles I (2007). The only edition or issue that the online ESTC locates of any 1635 printing of Parkinson's Paradisi is ESTC S94613. Of extant copies of that edition, the ESTC finds but one: the copy at NYPL at shelfmark "Arents 197", which suggests that George Arents bought it for its tobacco content for his unrivalled collection of books on that subject. The volume on offer, however, is a different edition or issue, as the imprint on the title-page reads not "Printed by Tho. Cotes, and are to be sold by Richard Royston" but rather "Printed by Tho Cotes, and are to be sold by John Grismond". The volume on offer appears to be a lifetime edition of Parkinson's Paradisi in Sole Paradisus Terrestris that is entirely unrecorded in the ESTC. It must be noted that the Oxford DNB calls this work, Parkinson's Paradisi (1629), Parkinson's "first and best-loved book" and "the first work published on English gardening".

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Book number: 9187

Catalogue: Agriculture

Keywords: agriculture botany prose

PONTEY (William):

The Profitable Planter. A Treatise on the Cultivation of Larch Scotch Fir Timber: showing that Their Excellent Quality (Especially that of the former) will Render Them so Extensively Useful, as greatly to promote the Interest of th Country. With Directions for Planting, in various soils and situation by a New and Expeditious Method; also, for the management of plantations. To which are added, Useful Hints, in regard to Shelter and Ornament.

Huddersfield: Printed for the Author, By Sikes and Smart; and sold by Vernor and Hood London..., [no ]date] [1796] FIRST EDITION. Large 8vo (in 4s), pp. 96, engraved plate of axes as frontispiece, uncut, original wrappers, with title in ink on front cover; some minor wear to extremities, but a very good copy. The Critical Review noticed the work in 1800: "The author's great objects are to show, that the English firs, in suitable soils, with proper management, are as useful as those of Norway, and will produced timber of very considerable scantlings; and also that larch is highly valuable as a timber tree, adapted not only to useful but ornamental purposes. The specimen of larch timber, transmitted with the work, is indeed beautiful and seems to possess the smoothness and toughness of beech, with a better hue and more varied veins...." ESTC locates 8 copies in UK libraries (4 in Oxford libraries) and six in United State libraries. None of these seem to have the "specimen of larch timber" alluded to in the review. ESTC dates the work as 1800 (based on the engraved plate), but the paper is watermarked 1796 and 1797.

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Book number: 9277

Catalogue: Agriculture

Keywords: agriculture trees prose

[SCOTTISH AGRICULTURE]:

Select Essays on Husbandry. Extracted from the Museum Rusticum, and Foreign Essays on Agriculture. Containing A Variety of Experiments, all of which have been found to succeed in Scotland.

Edinburgh: Printed for John Balfour, 1767. FIRST EDITION. 8vo (in 4s), 202 x 122 mms., pp. [ii], viii, 408, 2 engraved plates, one folding chart at end, contemporary calf,, spine richly gilt in compartments; front joint cracked and tender, lacks label, corners worn, with the contemporary Welsh autograph "Penry Williams" on title-page. John Balfour (1715 - 1795) was one half of the Hamilton and Balfour printing and publishing firm; the partnership was dissolved in 1762, and Balfour continued to publish by himself and became a well-known importer of French books. The first essay in the volume, "Reasons why farming so often proves unprofitable," is probably as relevant in the 21st century as it was in the late 18th.

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Book number: 7266

Catalogue: Agriculture

Keywords: agriculture technology prose Scottish Enlightenment

[YOUNG (Arthur)]:

A Course of Experimental Agriculture: Containing An exact Register of all the Business Transacted during Five Years On near Three Hundred Acres of Various Soils...[etc.]. In Four Volumes.

Dublin: Printed for J. Exshaw, H. Saunders, D. Chamberlaine, W. Sleater, J. Potts, J. Hoey, jun., J. Williams, J. Porter, R. Moncrieffe, and T. Walker, 1771 4 volumes. 8vo, 204 x 122 mms., pp. [iv], [iv] v - xxxi [xxxii blank], 473 [475 blank]; [iv], 439 [440 blank]; [iv], 404; [iv] 479 [480 blank], including half-titles in volumes 1 and 4, with two folding engraved plates in volume, contemporary lightly speckled calf, gilt spines, olive morocco labels; some slight worming of binding, but a very good and attractive set, with the armorial bookplate of N. C.Colthurst, Antrim County Cork on the front paste-down page of each volume. Arthur Young (1741 - 1820) is said of have written, or at least compiled, about 250 books, and there is little doubt about his exceptional energy. The first edition of this work was published in two volumes, but Young is also said to have spent time and money buying up any copies that came onto the market and presumably destroying them. Liam Blunt: "Rehabilitating Arthur Young," The Economic History Review (2003). Fussell, vol. 2, pp. 70 - 80.

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Book number: 9900

Catalogue: Agriculture

Keywords: agriculture topography

YOUNG (David), of Perth:

National Improvements upon Agriculture, in Twenty-Seven Essays.

Edinburgh: Printed for, and Sold by the Author, and by John Bell..., 1785. FIRST AND ONLY EDITION. 8vo (in 4s), 217 x 137 mms., pp. xx, 403 [404 blank, 405 - 412 lists of subscribers], 3 engraved plates (one folding), contemporary polished sheepskin, gilt spine; lacks label, slight wear to joints, but a very good copy. Young (about whom little seems to be known) dedicates his book to the Board of Trustees for the Encouragement of Fisheries, Manufactures, and Improvements in Scotland. The essays cover historical, practical, and theoretical matters, including a retrospective of agricultural developments over the preceding four centuries. One essay takes up the methods of preventing emigration, while another consider whether large or small towns are better for the general good of the public. The Monthly Review commented, "We have seldom read a performance that assumes a more uninviting appearance than that now before us. The language is vulgar, and abounding in Scotticisms so as to be scarcely intelligible; the syle prolix and embarrassed, full of digressions that have no connection with the subject and repetitions without end. The Author is evidently unacquainted with the first principles of philosophy..." After several more lines of similar severity, the reviewer adds that "the intelligent reader, who can pass over its imperfections will discover that some fundamental principles of agriculture are laid down in this work, and frequently inculcated with great and laudable zeal...." Goldsmiths 12848.

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Book number: 8217

Catalogue: Agriculture

Keywords: agriculture economics prose Scottish Enlightenment