A Short Treatise on Horticulture.
Embracing descriptions of a great variety of fruit and ornamental trees and shrubs, grape vines, bulbous flowers, green-house trees and plants, &c. Nearly all of which are at present comprised in the collection of the Linnean Botanic Garden, at Flushing, near New-York. With directions for their Culture, Management, &c.
New York: T. and J. Swords, 1828 Stock Code: 116896
One of the most important early American contributions to horticultural literature
First and sole edition. Despite Prince's objective being to simply "give a few brief remarks as to the Culture of Fruit Trees, &c. by throwing together some of the leading rules, whose adoption has proved most successful" (Preface), A Short Treatise on Horticulture was immensely popular and influential, becoming one of the most important early American contributions to horticultural literature.It was "the first book of the kind in America that broke away from the English custom of treating horticulture in calendar style" (Hedrick). Prince would collaborate with his son, William Robert Prince, to publish A Treatise on the Vine two years later to great acclaim, and under their direction the Prince Nursery at Long Island became "the most important nursery in the United States" (Gabler p. 213). Contrary to Hedrick's opinion in 1950 that the book is common, today it is rare commercially, with only a few sales records in the past 50 years.
Description
Duodecimo (195 x 117 mm). Original brown quarter cloth, brown paper boards, untitled, uncut, plain cream endpapers. The printed paper spine label missing.
Illustrations
Ownership inscription to front endpaper verso.
Condition
Wear to extremities, discolouration and spotting to boards, spine joints cracked and frayed, foxing and browning throughout, some loss to edges of pp. iii-vi, closed tear to p. 103, a good copy.
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