Dried Specimens, First Edition (6 results)

First Edition. Very good copy in quarter cloth over marble boards. Internally, plates are in very good condition. Genuine dried flowers on plates with tissue guards, well preserved. Date is suggested from date on some plates. Physical description: 6 plates with illustrations and text, 11 plates with dried flowers and tissue guards. Subjects: Flowers. Horticulture. Flowers; specimens. 3 Kg.

First Edition. Very good copy in quarter cloth over marble boards. Internally, plates are in very good condition. Genuine dried flowers on plates with tissue guards, well preserved. Date is suggested from date on some plates. Physical description: 6 plates with illustrations and text, 11 plates with dried flowers and tissue guards. Subjects: Flowers. Horticulture. Flowers; specimens. 1 Kg.

First edition, small folio (310 x 195 mm), [2], 8, 36 leaves of botanical drying paper containing 48 mounted specimens, each with two letterpress labels, the smaller beneath the specimen, the larger (with a detailed description printed within a greek-key decorative border) on the verso facing the specimen, collated complete with all specimens (though some are in the wrong order, i.e. no. 48 is between no. 3 and no. 4 plus a couple of similar instances), half sheep, rebacked, contemporary patterned paper boards, paper overlay over a damp patch on upper board, internally in excellent condition, with only slight signs of foxing and all specimens intact, new printed paper label to spine. The rare first edition of this most appealing publication. Privately published by John Moore the Curator of the Royal Dublin Society's Botanic Garden, Glasnevin. The second and third editions have a commercial imprint and don't look nearly as attractive and are also much more common. Such books as this are particularly rare due to the immense labour involved in their publication, and only a few copies were produced.

First edition, 4 vols., small 4to (245 x 200 mm), printed titles and indices, 350 original mounted specimens of Fugi, with printed labels, volumes 1 and 2 contemporary morocco-backed boards (one cover detached, worn), volumes 3 and 4 publisher's boards, one lacking spine. A remarkable work in the of mycology, providing a visual and physical record of British fungi. Miles Joesph Berkeley (1803-1889), a Church of England clergyman and naturalist and to be later known as 'the father of British mycology'. He contributed the section on British fungi to Sir James Edward Smith's 'The English Flora' which was published in 5 volumes from 1824 to 1836. Here he presents the dried specimens which he had described in Smith's work. For obvious reasons fungal exsiccatae are much rarer than other species of the genus and complete set are seldom meet with. This being the only complete set to appear at auction in the past 70 years. Provenance: Andrew Fountaine library; the library of Michael Walpole (1933-2009), founding member of the Loughborough Naturalists' Club.

First and sole edition, presentation copy, inscribed by the author on the front free endpaper, "To the Messrs Lawson with the author's complements". An uncommon and naturally fragile work, traced in ten institutions worldwide. The Lawsons were likely the Edinburgh nurserymen Peter and Charles Lawson of Lawson & Son, founded in 1770: "prominent agricultural nurserymen of the day", whose "prizes for dissection of grasses, for kinds of cereals, and like subjects, were constant reminders of the relations of botanical study to agriculture" (Balfour, p. 47). The units "lb", "s", and "d" have been added in manuscript to each of the seed and price charts, and further minor textual corrections have been made to the sample labels. Moore (1808-1879) was the director of the Royal Dublin Society's Botanic Garden for over 40 years, including across the time of the Great Famine during which he conducted research into the potato blight. He confirmed the disease was caused by a fungus and not atmospheric conditions as was previously thought. His observations of the disease in potatoes in the Botanic Garden on 20 August 1845 are the first verified record of the disease in Ireland. The present work is part of his extensive body of research on the native grasses of the British Isles. His recommendations regarding grass species for the composition of good pasture have been cited as a precursor to contemporary techniques for ensuring varied agricultural ecosystems. Provenance: Ownership inscription of one David Black on the front free endpaper. Bookplate of the Bibliotheca Lindesiana on the front pastedown, the Balcarres shelf label with shelf mark in manuscript beneath. Isaac Bayley Balfour, A Sketch of the Professors of Botany in Edinburgh from 1670 until 1887, 1913. Small folio. With 48 grass samples mounted within paper slits, some mounted 2 to a page, with adjacent text labels printed in black within decorative frames. Woodcut depicting an auctioneer and a yacht removed from separate work and pasted to final leaf. Original half sheep, marbled paper sides, green title label printed in black to front cover, white cloth ties to both covers. Sheep stripped to spine, edges worn, boards rubbed, slight loss to title label not affecting text, foxing to contents, front inner hinge starting but firm, grass samples remarkably well-preserved and complete, a very good copy.

Folio. pp. vi, lxvi, 316, [4, index]; complete with all the actual specimens of grasses and seeds. Contemporary half straight grained morocco, front joint cracking, but sound. The Earl of Rosebery's copy with his bookplate. The important first edition of this work, the specimens being replaced with printed plates in subsequent editions.