COOK, Moses

The Manner of Raising, Ordering, and improving and Forest and Fruit-Trees: Also, How to Plant, Make and Keep Woods, Walks, Avenues, Lawns, Hedges, &c.

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.

Item #42560

Price: $1,750.00