Statical essays: Containing vegetable staticks; or, An account of some statical experiments on the sap in vegetables. Being an essay towards a natural history of vegetation . . . ; [offered with:] Statical essays: containing haemastatics; or, an account of some hydraulic and hydrostatical experiments made on the blood and blood-vessels of animals. . . . To which is added, an appendix, . . . With an index to both volumes [PMM]

A superb set of these classics of experimental science, milestones in the history of hydrodynamics and physiology, with the imprimatur of Isaac Newton as president of the Royal Society. Complete in two crown octavo volumes (198 x 122mm) bound in contemporary calf. Vegetable Staticks: Third Edition, with amendments. [6],x,[4],376pp, with 19 copper-engraved plates. Haemastatics: Second Edition, corrected. [10],vi,xvii-xxii,[26],354,[22]pp. Original boards, beautifully respined to match by Fitterer. Handsome copper-engraved Chippendale-style book plate of Thomas Woodward to front paste-down of volume 1. Both volumes fresh, bright, and virtually pristine. PMM 189 ("remarkable scientific investigations"). Grolier 100 Science 45a and b. Hunt II, p. xlvi. Garrison-Morton 765 (Haemastaticks "is the greatest single contribution to our knowledge of the vascular system after Harvey") Henrey 779 and pp. 37-39 ("the most outstanding and important" of eighteenth-century works on plant physiology). Dibner 26. Wellcome III, p. 194. Sowerby I, 22. Pritzel p. 527. Volume one, first published in 1727 as Vegetable staticks: or, an account of some statical experiments on the sap in vegetables," was the "first complete account of the physiology of plants." (Horblit) "In his investigations of plant physiology, . . . Hales studied the movement of water in plants, determining that leaf suction is the main force by which water is raised through a plant, and showing that plants lose water constantly via transpiration through their leaves." (Garrison-Morton) Thomas Jefferson included Vegetable Staticks on the list of agricultural books that he recommended be purchased for the Library of Congress. (Sowerby) Volume two, first published in 1733, investigated the movement of blood in animals, measuring cardiac capacity, blood pressure, and blood velocity, and was a major step toward the modern understanding of the mechanics of the heart and circulation. The book plate is perhaps that of one of the publishers or of the botanist Thomas Jenkinson Woodward (1744–1820), joint author with Samuel Goodenough, bishop of Carlisle, of Observations on the British Fuci (1797) and contributor to Smith and Sowerby's English Botany, to William Withering's second edition of Systematic Arrangement of British Plants, and to Thomas Martyn's edition of Philip Miller's Gardeners' Dictionary. But more likely, given the squirrel crest, it belonged to one of the Woodwards of Hopton Court, Shropshire. N. B. With few exceptions (always identified), we only stock books in exceptional condition. All orders are packaged with care and posted promptly. Satisfaction guaranteed. (Fine Editions Ltd is a member of the Independent Online Booksellers Association, and we subscribe to its codes of ethics.). …