The Instructive Picture Book. Or, Lessons from the Vegetable World. Illustrated with 31 colour plates, arranged by Robert M. Stark.

FIRST EDITION, folio, pp. 22, [2] + 31 double-page hand-coloured plates. Original green paper lithographed and hand-coloured pictorial boards, ads to pastedowns, pink flyleaves. Some toning and spotting. Boards dustsoiled, binding shaken but joints holding. Contemporary ink ownership inscription of ?Misses Isabella Anne Drummond? to front flyleaf. The first edition of this exquisitely colourful survey of plants and their uses with text by the prolific English novelist Charlotte Mary Yonge (1823-1901). It features thirty-one double pages of hand-coloured plates arranged by Haddington-born Robert Mackenzie Stark (1815-1873) who worked as a nurseryman in Edinburgh and also as a seed merchant. The illustrations cover 138 plant categorised into seasonal flowers, kitchen vegetable and roots, plants useful in domestic economy, forage or field plants, grains, poisonous plants, British fungi, and fruits. With eleven plates devoted to poisonous plants, it?s safe to assume these were designed to instruct children to avoid these plants when playing outdoors. It is rare to find in original boards complete with all 31 plates, and there are no copies currently on the market.…