Timber Merchant's Guide. Also a Table, whereby, at one view, may be seen the solid and superficial measure of any square or unequal Hewed Logs or Plank, from one to forty-seven inches.

Rarities from Sturgis Library series. Facsimile reprint. Cloth binding, gilt titles. Reprint of Baltimore:John D. Toy for James Lovegrove, 1823. 24 pp., followed by 89 pp. of tables, 30 plates in color illustrating the best way to use various types and configurations of trees to produce specific ship parts. Peter Guillet's Timber Merchant's Guide is the first in a series of joint publishing ventures between the Sturgis Library of Barnstable, Massachusetts and the Clock and Rose Press called Rarities from the Sturgis Library, which will make available rare and unusual books and manuscripts from the collections of the Library. The Timber Merchant's Guide was originally published in 1823 and is now part of Sturgis's maritime archives. This is an important, very early book, illustrated with thirty hand-colored lithographic plates that show the most economic method of using various tree types to provide the timber needed in the building of a Seventy-Four Gun Ship of the Line. This was the second book printed in America to be illustrated with lithographs, preceded only by Sir James Edward Smith's Grammar of Botany (New York: Seaman, 1822). The plates are by lithographer Henry Stone, the first lithographer to practice in Baltimore. Timber Merchant's Guide is important in the history of art and book publishing in the United States; in military history; the history of wooden shipbuilding; in American history; and in the history of environmental planning. The author begins the book with a rare and impassioned plea for federal government intervention in the conservation of the forests as a national resource. Limited to 200, numbered. New in new dustjacket.…