
GARDENING
[
]
HOPE that You Never Receive a Gift of
“Penny Royal”!
Anonymous. Language of flowers. London: Rock Brothers & Payne (Boot, printer, Dockhead), no date [ca. 1850]. Miniature (49 mm; 1.95"). 100 pp., [14] ff. (ads).
[SOLD]
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Miniature book in the series “Rock's Bijou Library.” The anonymous author details what each variety of flower communicates, such as “Hyacinth, purple, Improvement by education.”Binding: Original black goat elaborately stamped in gilt on covers and spine. All edges gilt.
Provenance: Miniature bookplate of Grace Broecker, a major collector of miniature books: a portion of her collection is now at the Huntington Library.
Welsh, Bibliography of miniature books, 4279. Binding as above. Upper outer corner of front cover abraded exposing minute hint of the board. Very good. (35633)

Bacon on
NATURE
Bacon, Francis. Sylva sylvarum, sive historia naturalis, in decem centurias distributa. Lug. Batavor.: Apud Franciscum Hackium, 1648. 12mo (12.9 cm, 5.1"). Add. engr. t.-p., [34], 612, [48], 87, [1] pp.
$700.00
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Compendium of scientific (and also quaintly “traditional”) knowledge: This wide-ranging gathering of interesting observations in natural history was first published posthumously by the author's chaplain and secretary, Dr. Rawley, in 1626, and appears here translated into Latin by Jacob Gruterus. The present edition was, as Willems puts it, “exécutée” at Leyden by Hackius for Elzevier; some examples bear Elzevier's imprint and some Hackius's. The Novus Atlas accompanies the title work, with both having prefaces by Rawley.
Provenance: Front pastedown with armorial bookplate of Alexander Oswald Brodie (not, please note, the American officer and governor of Arizona Territory); title-page with Brodie's inked inscription, dated 1839, Dresden.
Brunet, I, 604; Gibson, Bacon, 185b; Willems 1058. On Bacon, see: Dictionary of National Biography. Contemporary vellum with yapp edges, spine with early inked title; spine lettering rubbed, back cover darkened. Both pastedowns lifted, front pastedown with bookplate beneath; free endpapers lacking. Title-page with inscription as above; pages with a very few small scattered spots, almost entirely clean. A handsome copy. (30360)

Makes the Weak Strong Peculiar to Itself
C.I. Hood & Co. Hood's pansy. Lowell, MA: C.I. Hood & Co., [ca. 1890]. 16mo (10.5 cm, 4.2"). [16] pp.; illus.
$95.00
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Shape book in the form of pansies gold and purple: A promotion of Hood's Sarsaparilla, following one page dedicated to tips on growing pansies. The sales spiel is illustrated with
steel-engraved views and vignettes printed in dark blue and dark green. A tipped-in slip advertises B.F. Taylor's general merchandise store in Wheelock, VT.
Publisher's half-tone color-printed paper wrappers as above, with a river scene glowing in the “eye” of one of the pansies; spine rubbed, one tiny spot of staining or fading near front upper edge. Pages gently age-toned.
A patent medicine give-away not, originally, meant to be much less ephemeral than the little flower it celebrates. (36568)

English Tree-Tending Formal, Mathematical Planting
(Printed for a Woman Publisher)
Cook, Moses. The manner of raising, ordering, and improving forest-trees: With directions how to plant, make, and keep woods, walks, avenues, lawns, hedges, &c. London: Pr. for Eliz. Bell, John Darby, Arthur Bettesworth, et al., 1724. 8vo (19.8 cm, 7.75"). Frontis. (incl. in pagination), xx, 273, [3] pp.; 4 fold. plts.
[SOLD]
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Acclaimed and influential treatise by Cook, head gardener to the Earl of Essex and a professional nurseryman. This is the stated third edition, corrected, following the first of 1676, produced for
a woman publisher, Elizabeth Bell, among others; it includes “Rules and Tables shewing how the Ingenious Planter may measure Superficial Figures, divide Woods or Land, and measure Timber and other solid Bodies, either by Arithmetick or Geometry: With the Uses of that excellent Line, the Line of Numbers, by several new Examples; and many other Rules, useful for most Men.”
The volume is illustrated with a
lovely copper-engraved frontispiece depicting tree-fellers at work and with four folding plans showing how to calculate the scale and design of landscape features. At the back of the work is a brief overview of the rules for making cider, and an additional recipe for birch beer (alcoholic) is given in the chapter on birches.
ESTC T131054; Goldsmiths’-Kress no. 6265. 18th-century calf, covers framed in double blind fillets with blind roll along joint, spine with gilt-stamped leather title and date labels and gilt-stamped compartment decorations; joints and portions of spine leather unobtrusively repaired, edges and extremities rubbed, sides with a bit of light scuffing, gilt mildly rubbed. Scattered faint foxing, most pages clean. (30312)

“New, Useful, & Entertaining”
Daboll, Nathan. New-England almanac, for the year ... 1808 ... By Nathan Daboll. New-London [Conn.]: Pr. by Ebenezer P. Cady, [1807]. 12mo. [18] ff.
$75.00
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For ALMANACS, click here.
Delille, Jacques. Les jardins, poëme...nouvelle édition, considérablement augmentée. Paris: Chez Levrault (pr. by P. Didot l’aîné), 1801. 12mo (13.5 cm, 5.25"). [6], xxxv, [1], 216 pp.; 4 plts.
$250.00
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Subtitled “L’art d’embellir les paysages,” this gardening-themed poem includes praise of the virtues of the relaxed, relatively “natural” jardin anglais. Les jardins, Delille’s most successful work, was originally published in 1782 with many subsequent editions appearing both in French and English; the present example is a nicely bound copy of the expanded version, illustrated with four engraved plates by Monciau after Benoît-Louis Prevost and other artists.
Binding: Contemporary treed calf. Spine with gilt-stamped red leather title label, gilt-stamped compartment lines, and floral devices within compartments.
Brunet, II, 576. Binding somewhat rubbed and starting to crack over joints, though very firm; some onetime water exposure visible on front cover (a not entirely unattractive effect). Pages with a bit of very minor spotting, and some offsetting from plates.
An attractive copy of a pretty book. (8295)

More Than 1000 Illustrations by
Pieter van der Borcht
& with Evidence of Readership
Dodoens, Rembert. Remberti Dodonaei Mechliniensis medici caesari Stirpium historiae pemptades sex sive libri XXX. Antuerpiae: Ex officina
Christophori Plantini, 1583. Folio (36 cm; 14"). [10] ff., 860 pp., [13] ff., illus.
$8500.00
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Written and printed during the second decade of the Dutch Golden Age (1570–1670), this
first edition of Dodoens' Stirpium historiae pemptades sex is coveted today by collectors of printing for the excellent typography of the Plantin Press, by collectors of early illustration for van der Borcht's detailed woodcuts, and by collectors and scholars of natural history for the important contributions to botany that the author incorporates.
Hunt says of this that it is the “First edition of Dodoens' last and most comprehensive botanical work, incorporating material from a number of his earlier books, including the Cruydeboeck”; it was the basis for Gerard's famous English herbal.
Rembert Dodoens (1517–85), a Flemish physician and botanist, was fully immersed in the Renaissance method of pursuing knowledge, whether derived from ancient texts or from new discoveries and personal observation, or combining the best elements of both streams. That is what he did with his Cruydeboeck and with Stirpium historiae pemptades sex.
Coming as it does during the first hundred years after the discovery of the New World and concomitant knowledge of New World plants, the Pemptades illustrates and discusses such new discoveries as maize, tobacco, mechoacan, and mpnopal. The
1298 woodcut illustrations here were commissioned by Plantin from the Flemish artist Pieter van der Borcht (1545–1608), a pupil of Pieter Brueghel the Elder. Thomas Gloning (Rembert Dodoens und sein Cruyde Boeck) says van der Borcht is held to be one of the most gifted botanical painters of the 16th century.
Provenance: College of Pharmacy of the City of New York.
Evidence of readership: A reader of the late 16th century has corrected some of the text and has added interesting marginalia in Latin that expounds or expands on sections of it. A later reader, probably of the late 18th or early 19th century, has labeled some of the woodcut illustrations with the plant names using Linnaean and post-Linnaean taxonyms. For example some have “W” at the end of the Latin name, for Carl Ludwig Willdenow (1765–1812), others “Schmidt” for F.W. Schmidt (1764–96), most just have an “L” at the end, for Linnaeus.
Pritzel 2350; Nissen, Botanische Buchillustration, 517; Hunt Botanical Catalogue 143; Nissen 517; DSB, IV,138–9. Voet, Plantin Press, 1101; Adams D722; Arents, Adds., 74; Alden & Landis 583/23; Index Aurel. 154.557; Bibliographia Belgica D117. Recent quarter mottled brown calf with green and red stone-pattern marbled paper sides; raised bands, each accented above and below by single gilt rule and with gilt center devices in five spine compartments. Library stamp as above on title-page and three other pages. Minor worming in some, a very few, margins, most notable in upper margins of pp. 260–89; gently age-toned, and a few leaves with browning or foxing; overall
a crisp, clean, decidedly desirable copy. (34549)

Polenta before It Was Made with
“Turkey Wheat”
& Woodcuts from the
Moretus Press
Gerard, John. The herball, or, General historie of plantes. London: Printed by Adam Islip, Joice Norton & Richard Whitakers, 1636. Large folio (35.5 cm; 14"). [19 of 20] ff., 1630 [i.e., 1634] pp., [24 of 25] ff. (without the initial and final blank leaves).
$13,500.00
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“When reading Gerard we are wandering in the peace of an Elizabethan garden, with a companion who
has a story for every flower and is full of wise philosophies” (Woodward, p. viii). And indeed, Gerard's herbal is written in “glorious Elizabethan prose, [with] the folk-lore steeping its pages'” (Woodward, p. vii), these factors going a long way towards making it one of the best-known and -loved of the early English herbals. The “herbs” surveyed include plants aquatic and terrestrial, New World and Old, embracing shrubs, plants, and trees, each with a description of its structure and appearance, where it is found (and how it got there), when it is sown and reaped or flowers, its name or names (often with engrossingly exotic etymologies), its “temperature,” and its “vertues” or uses (often curious).
The story is famous: John Norton, Queen's printer, wished to bring out an English language version of Dodoen's Pemptades of 1583 and hired a certain “Dr. Priest” to do so, but the translator died with the work only partially done. A copy of the manuscript translation made its way into John Gerard's hands and he seized the opportunity, reorganizing the contents, obscuring the previous translator's contribution, incorporating aspects of Rembert and Cruydenboeck's works, and commandeering the result as his own.
Gerard abandoned Dodoen's classification, opting for l'Obel's instead, and, in a stroke of ambition and brilliance, illustrated the work with
more than 2500 woodcuts of plants. Many of these are large and all are attractive but more than a few were of plants he himself did not know, thus leading to considerable confusion between illustration and text in the earliest editions, this being third overall and the second with Thomas Johnson's additions and amendments. For both Johnson editions
a large number of the woodcuts were obtained from the famous Leyden printing and publishing firm of Moretus, successors to the highly famous firm of Plantin. As Johnston notes: “Most of the cuts were those used in the botanicals published by Plantin, although a number of new woodcuts were added after drawings by Johnson and Goodyer” (Cleveland Herbal . . . Collections, #185).
The large thick volume begins with a handsome engraved title-page by John Payne incorporating a bust of the author, urns with flowers and herbs, and full-length seated images of Dioscorides and Theophrastus and of Ceres and Pomona. Replacing the missing initial blank is a later leaf on which is mounted a large engraving of Gerard. The text is printed in italic, roman, and gothic type.
There is, to us, a surprising and very interesting section on grapes and wines. The first part of our caption delights partly in discovery that maize, the “corn” of the U.S., is here called “turkey wheat” — with further note that you can make bread of it, but that the result is pleasing only to “barbarous” tastes! The entry as a whole shows
Gerard at his characteristic best, at once scientifically systematic and engagingly discursive.
Provenance: Neatly lettered name of “W. Younge” at top of title-page; it is tempting to attribute this to William Younge, physician of Sheffield and Fellow of the Royal Linnean Society, whose online correspondence shows him to have been an eager collector of botanical books.
STC (rev. ed.) 11752; Alden & Landis, European Americana, 636/25; Nissen, Botanischebuchs, 698n; Pritzel 3282n; Johnston, The Cleveland Herbal, Botanical, and Horticultural Collections, 185; Woodward, Gerard's Herball: The essence thereof distilled (London, 1964). On the source of the blocks, see: Hunt Botanical Catalogue and Bowen, K. L., & D. Imhof, The illustration of Books Published by the Moretuses (Antwerpen, 1997). For “Turkey Wheat, “ see: Gerard, p. 81; for polenta, p. 71. Late 17th-century English calf, plain style; rebacked professionally in the 20th century, later endpapers. As usual, without the first and last blank leaves. Three leaves with natural paper flaws in blank margins. A very good copy. (34500)
For HERBALS, click here.

England's First
HOME-GROWN GARDENING Book
Hyll [Hill], Thomas. The profitable arte of gardening: to which is added much necessarie matter, and a number of secrets, with the phisicke helps belonging to each hearbe, and that easily prepared. London: Edward Allde, 1593. 4to (19.2 cm, 7.55"). [8], 164 pp. (lacking pp. 57/58, 65–68, 83/84, & final 92 pp. appendix); illus.
[SOLD]
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Early, uncommon edition of the
first general treatise on gardening in English: an Elizabethan florilegium of growing advice and medicinal lore, compiled by an author who also published under the amusing semi–nom de plume “Didymus Mountain.” For this popular work, Hill selected and “Englished” quotations and information from classic texts including those of Pliny, Cato, Theophrastus, Aristotle, Dioscorides, Galen, among others; it was originally published ca. 1558 under the title A Briefe Treatyse of Gardening.
The text, much of which is printed in black letter, is illustrated with three attractive in-text woodcuts of mazes and an enclosed garden (the latter first used on the title-page of the first edition, but appearing here in the text instead), as well as with a full-page diagram of “a proper knot for a Garden, where is spare rome enough, the which may be set either with Time or Isope, at the discretion of the Gardener.” The appendices mentioned on the title-page (on beekeeping, husbandry, and tree grafting, under a separate title-page and with separate pagination) are not present in this copy.
Provenance: From the library of American collector Albert A. Howard, small booklabel (“AHA”) at rear.
ESTC S104120; Henrey, I, 200; Hunt Botanical Cat., 167; Luborsky & Ingram, Guide to English Illustrated Books, 13495; Graesse, III, 279. Not in Adams or Brunet. Early 20th-century half blue cloth and marbled paper–covered sides, spine with gilt-stamped title; spine and edges sunned to tan, cloth showing some minor bubbling. Lacking pages 57/58, 65–68, and 83/84 as well as the final appendix as described above. Two leaves with unobtrusive, neatly done repairs and one with slightly more noticeable repair, not obscuring sense; one leaf with small hole and short tear in upper outer corner, not touching text. Center of volume with small area of worming at lower inner portions, generally in between lines but occasionally touching a few letters. Pages age-toned, some with mild to moderate waterstaining in most outer margins, with last portion more generally and darkly stained; scattered spots of mild staining and foxing elsewhere.
Imperfect, and so priced, but still scarce and desirable. (37841)
Ireland, Samuel. Picturesque views on the river Thames, from its source in Glocestershire to the Nore; with observations on the public buildings and other works of art in its vicinity. London: T. & J. Egerton, 1792. 4to (25 cm, 9.8"). 2 vols. I: Add. engr. t.-p., xvi, 209, [3] pp.; 1 map, 27 plts., illus. II: Add. engr. t.-p., viii (incl. t.-p.), 258, [4] pp.; 1 map, 25 plts., illus.
$1875.00
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mouse-over, for an enlargement.
First edition of Ireland’s guidebook to the architectural, botanical, artistic, and historical pleasures to be found along the Thames, featuring assorted poetical digressions as well as descriptions of the splendor of Blenheim Castle and other castles and manors, the disrepair of London Bridge, and paintings by Rubens and Holbein. The two volumes are copiously illustrated with
52 aquatint plates engraved by C. Apostool after drawings by Ireland, 2 maps, and
a number of in-text cuts.
ESTC T2691; Abbey, Scenery, 430. Period-style quarter calf over marbled paper–covered sides, spines with gilt-stamped leather title and author labels, gilt-ruled raised bands, and gilt-stamped decorations in compartments. Versos only of half-titles, title-pages, and a few other leaves stamped by a now-defunct institution. Plates lightly to moderately spotted, with some instances of light offsetting to pages around plates. Pages faintly age-toned, with edges untrimmed; one leaf with lower outer corner torn away, not touching text.
This supplies both handsome, interesting pictures and good, now quaint reading. (15107)

At Least It's
NOT Eye of Newt
Langham, William. The garden of health: containing the sundry rare and hidden vertues and properties of all kindes of simples and plants. Together with the manner how they are to bee used and applyed in medicine for the health of mans body, against divers diseases and infirmities most common amongst men. London: Printed by Thomas Harper, 1633. 4to in 8s (19 cm; 7.5"). [4] ff., 702 pp., [33] ff.
$3400.00
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Preparing for a trip from England to Virginia or Massachusetts in the 1630s or 40s, one would have been well advised to make sure someone in the party was bringing a copy of Langham's work. Once in America, one would have made good use of the herbal remedies for some of the more common ailments the newly arrived would have suffered, and one would have had greater access to the “exotic” American sarsaparilla and guaiacum that Langham discusses.
This precursor to the “Physician's Desk Reference” is a practical compendium of medicinal and other plants arranged alphabetically from “acacia” to “wormwood” with a strong emphasis on plants that “can be gotten without any cost or labour, the most of them being such as grow in most places and are common among us” (folio [2]).
Langham's organization is this: “He devoted a chapter to each plant, describing its parts and their uses, the different processes such as distillation that could be applied to it, and how the resulting products could be used for particular diseases. To every item of information he added a number and at the end of the chapter there is an index or table of conditions with the numbers that were in the main text. The reader can thus see at a glance that one herb could be used in a wide variety of conditions, and whether a specific illness could be helped by a particular drug” (Wear, pp. 82–83).
This is the second edition, “corrected and amended,” the first having appeared in 1597. We are sure the reading public, which was sufficient to support a second edition, would have been helped rather more if the work had had illustrations, but that would have increased the cost of the work dramatically and a
wide audience was sought. The text is printed chiefly in gothic type while the end of chapter “indices” are in roman. This herbal was not printed during a period of good English typography, so the pages are dense with little white space or appreciation for making the text on the page easy on the eye rather than wearying.
ESTC S108241; STC (rev. ed.) 15196; Alden & Landis 633/67; Huth Library 817. On Langham, see Andrew Wear, Knowledge & Practice in English Medicine, 1550–1680. Contemporary English calf, boards modestly ruled in blind at edges; rebacked in high quality goat. Age-toning or old soiling, especially at the edges of margins and with offsetting from binding to title-page; some light marginal waterstaining especially at end in index; some tears (one shown here) with last leaves' edges chopped and final two with edges strengthened.
Overall, an unsophisticated copy that has been spared being washed, pressed, and gussied up. (34545)

Enchanting
19th-Century Reminiscences of the ROSE
The Queen of flowers: or, Memoirs of the rose. Philadelphia: Lea & Blanchard, 1841. 24mo (14.2 cm, 5.6"). viii, [13]–219 pp., 3 col. plts. Lacks frontis.
$60.00
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Epistolary musings on roses originally published as Memoirs of the Rose in 1824, here in their second edition. This version contains
three striking hand-colored lithographs of different rose species, including the Cabbage, Common Dog, and Damask.
Binding: Publisher's purple cloth, gilt-stamped title on spine; each cover framed in blind rules, with foliate and drawer-handle motifs surrounding a gilt leaf device at center. All edges gilt.
Bound as above, almost entirely sunned to brown and with a very little rubbing. Light to moderate age-toning and foxing throughout; lacks frontispiece, other three plates present and brightly colored.
Overall a handsomely done collection of letters about roses (and life). (35940)

“An Agreeable Book, in Intervals of Leisure & Retirement”
Saunders, Frederick. Salad for the solitary. New York: Lamport, Blakeman & Law, 1853. 8vo (19.8 cm, 7.8"). Frontis., add. engr. t.-p., 344, [2 (adv.)] pp.; illus.
$145.00
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First edition of these meditations on life's pleasures: Fine dining, good company, flowers, “curious and costly books,” pastimes and sports, the “fallacies and foibles of the literary profession,” etc. The essays are illustrated with various
in-text engravings by Avery and others.
NSTC 2S5136. Publisher's brown cloth, covers framed and panelled in blind with blind-stamped strapwork corner decorations, front cover and spine with gilt-stamped decorative title; unobtrusively rebacked preserving most of original spine, cloth sunned and mottled, corners/edges refurbished and hinges (inside) reinforced. Ex–social club library: 19th-century bookplate, call number on endpaper, pressure-stamp on title-page, no other markings. Author's name inked in an early hand on the title-page (which gives “By an Epicure” only). Pages lightly age-toned with various spottings and stainings and a few marks of emphasis; some corners creased with a very few torn away.
Aged but not displeasingly so, especially given this work's affection for all things vintage and evocatively nostalgic. (32308)
See
also, perhaps, AGRICULTURE click here.
or,
coming in from a different angle,

ARCHITECTURE click
here.
For HERBALS, click here!
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not in PRB&M's
illustrated catalogues . . .
keyword,
e.g. = GARDEN . . .
probably
excepting
the string of phrases,
Covent-Garden, Covent Garden, Garden City,
The Garden Ltd.!

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