Moïse

1679 · rif. 42560 — London: Peter Parker 1679. 4to. 7 1/2 x 6 inches. Reissue of the 1676 first edition with cancel title. xvi 204 4 pp. Illustrated with 4 engraved plates. Bound with: Gabriel PLATTES c.1600-1644. A Discovery of Subterranean Treasure: viz. Of all manner of Mines and Minerals at end. London: Peter Parker 1679. iv 24 pp. Period quarter calf and marbled paper boards An important early English treatise on forestry and designed woodland here in the 1679 issue with the rare addition of Plattes's tract on mines and minerals. Cook was gardener to the Earl of Essex at Cassiobury Park near Watford and laid out many woodland walks and avenues including reputedly an avenue of 296 lime trees. Cook wrote from practical experience as gardener to Arthur Capell first Earl of Essex at Cassiobury Park near Watford one of the notable Restoration landscapes outside London. His treatise treats trees both as productive estate assets and as elements of design giving directions for raising transplanting pruning grafting and ordering forest and fruit trees as well as for planting. The engraved plates and accompanying rules for measuring land and timber show the book's practical range joining arboriculture surveying estate management and landscape design. The work reflects a moment when English country-house landscapes were increasingly shaped through ordered planting axial walks avenues and managed woodland. Cook's association with Cassiobury gives the book particular interest: he is traditionally credited with laying out woodland walks and avenues there including a celebrated avenue of lime trees. His manual preserves the working knowledge behind such improvements before the broader eighteenth-century shift toward more naturalistic landscape gardening. The appended Plattes tract broadens the volume from woodland and estate improvement to the useful exploitation of natural resources. A Discovery of Subterranean Treasure gives practical directions for locating mines and minerals and for melting refining and assaying ores from gold to coal. Plattes an experimental writer on agriculture and practical science wrote for readers interested in applicable knowledge rather than scholastic theory. Bound with Cook's forestry manual the two works form a compact volume on improvement above and below ground: the ordering of trees woods and avenues followed by the discovery and testing of mineral wealth. Fussell pp.39-40; Henrey 39; Kress 1483; Wing C6033; Hoover 232. Peter Parker unknown books