A Sure Method of Improving Estates, by plantations of oak, elm, ash, beech, and other timber trees, coppice woods etc.

A Sure Method of Improving Estates, by plantations of oak, elm, ash, beech, and other timber trees, coppice woods etc. London, Francis Clay & Daniel Brown, 1728. 8vo. (x) + xxii (ie.xx) + 274pp. With engraved frontispiece by Toms, woodcut head- and tail-pieces. Title-page in red and black. Contemporary speckled calf; spine neatly rebacked. One of the earliest works (by some 25 years) to set out in a professional manner the importance of silviculture and arboriculture , which was taken up with zeal in the second half of the 18th century (Henrey). Langley (1696-1751) was an architect, surveyor, hydraulics expert and landscape gardener; he gave advice to estate owners throughout Great Britain and Ireland. The present treatise gives practical and informative material , and details of the profits expected; it was published when Langley was at Twickenham before moving to Westminster, within the same period that he issued his New principles of gardening and Pomona (1728, 1729). The engraver of the frontispiece, Peter Toms (d.1777), contributed illustrations to the Pomona. A very good copy. Desmond, p413. Henrey 929, and vol II, pp470-1, 554, 647. Hunt 473.…