Plants and gardening—Hill | The Profitable Arte of Gardening, 1574, third edition [with:] Dodoens, A New Herball, 1595, 2 volumes in all

Plants and gardening

Two volumes of works on plants and gardening, comprising:

(1) Thomas Hill. The profitable arte of gardening, now the thirde time set forth... To this is annexed two proper treatises, the one entituled, The marvellous gouernment, propertie, and benefite of the bees, with the rare secrets of the honie and waxe. And the other: the yearely conjectures, meete for husbandmen to know... Whereunto is newly added a treatise of the arte of graffing and planting of trees. London: Henry Bynneman, 1574 [STC 13495; ESTC S11736; British Bee Books 7]

4to (183 x 139 mm), title-page in each work, each with woodcut vignettes, woodcut illustrations in first work, woodcut initials and ornaments, woodcut printer's device to verso of final leaf, nineteenth-century maroon morocco by Riviere & Son, gilt edges, rebacked with new endpapers

THE FIRST POPULAR ENGLISH WORK ON GARDENING AND APICULTURE. "A profitable instruction of the perfite ordering of bees has separate dated title page and separate pagination; register is continuous" (ESTC).

(2) Rembert Dodoens. A New Herball, or historie of plants. London: Edmund Bollifant, 1595 [STC 6986; ESTC S109768]

8vo (181 x 133 mm), title-page with woodcut border of printer's ornaments, woodcut initials and printer's ornaments, ink doodle of a maze to front endleaf, leaves in first and final gatherings and a few others reinforced with tissue at margins

With several early modern ownership inscriptions (see below).

PROVENANCE:

(2) "Thomas Walker His Booke | Witnes by me | John Adereen Doctere | of Phisick": early modern presentation inscription to verso of title; "[?] J. Rowes": early modern ownership inscription to verso of title; Edward Watts: early modern ownership inscription to front free endpaper; Sir William Forbes of Pitsligo (1739-1806): armorial bookplate