SOCIETY OF IMPROVERS IN THE KNOWLEDGE OF AGRIGULTURE. Lou...

A treatise concerning the manner of fallowing of ground , raising of grass-seeds, and training of lint and hemp, for the increase and improvement of the linnen-manufactories in Scotland

Edinburgh: printed by Robert Fleming and Company, 1724.
8vo: A--L8 (blank L8), 88 leaves, pp. 118 [8] 127--173 [3] (last 3 pages blank). Wood or metalcut headpiece, initial and tailpieces. Plates: 7 folding engraved plates. Signed 'Tho Calder' or 'TC', though the signature is rather faint in this copy (bound as foldouts interleaved with the leaves of text carrying descriptions). Leaf size and condition: 183 x 118mm. Light dustsoiling; tiny wormholes and tracks in the blank margins of sigs B--E; waterstains in sig I. Binding: Contemporary blind-tooled and sprinkled panelled calf, red morocco lettering piece. A little rubbed, surface of leather cracking on spine, but a well preserved binding. Provenance and annotation: References: ESTC t136801; Goldsmiths'--Kress 6278; Perkins 1174.
First edition. Chapters 5--8 reprint Louis Crommelin's Essay towards the improvement of the hempen and flaxen manufactures in the Kingdom of Ireland (Dublin, 1705)
§ Published to encourage the improvement of Scotland's agriculture and to promote the linen and hemp industries. The first three chapters expound the virtues of English agricultural methods, including dairy farming; chapters 4 and 5 are on growing flax and hemp for textiles; chapters 6 and 7 are on spinning and weaving these fibres; chapter 8 on bleaching; and an appendix prints the texts of various laws concerning linen manufacture and other matters of economic importance. Halkett and Laing attributed the book to the Jacobite leader William Mackintosh of Borlum, under whose name it is still often catalogued, although it is now generally thought that Robert Maxwell (1695--1765), Secretary of the Society of Improvers in the Knowledge of Agriculture, under whose auspices the book was published, was largely responsible for writing it. Crommelin, the text of whose rare Essay of 1705, is included is identified as 'the Founder of the Linen-Manufactory in Ireland, about the Year 1700'. The plates, often lacking, are copied from Crommelin and are valuable as early detailed constructional drawings of weaving looms. They show 'A French Loom'; 'A Loom call'd Estille'; a 'Dutch Loom'; and 'The Tools for a Flax Dresser'. Several views of the looms are shown, and the parts described in detail in the letterpress on the facing pages. ESTC shows that this work is fairly widely held in libraries, though many copies lack the plates: it seems that a remainder issue was put out without plates. Crommelin's work, however, is very rare, with copies of the first edition only at Folger and Huntington outside Ireland and the UK; selections were printed at Glasgow in 1725 (NLS only) and there was a Dublin reprint in 1734 (Columbia and Huntington only outside Ireland and the UK). <<In the eighteenth century a number of works on flax and hemp were published in Scotland, one of the earliest of these being A treatise concerning the manner of fallowing ground, raising of grass-seeds and training of lint and hemp. This was published in Edinburgh in 1724 by the Society of Improvers in the Knowledge of Agriculture. This Society had been established in June of the previous year. It worked for practical reforms in Scottish agriculture by making known and encouraging new ideas in husbandry, and by giving advice to members on improving their lands. Its first President was Thomas Hope of Rankeillour, or Rankeillor, who had travelled widely and had studied farming methods in England, France, Flanders, Holland, and other countries. >>Henrey. Literature: A. J. Durie, The Scottish Linen Industry in the 18th Century (1979) pp. 14--16; Blanche Henrey, British Botanical and Horticultural Literature before 1800 (3 vols, 1975), II, pp. 603--605.

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• продавец: Roger Gaskell (GREAT BRITAIN)