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First edition, very rare, an early survey of the technology of flight before the advances of Godard, Nadar et al. Tissandier, p. 11. No copy located in OCLC.

Four rare perfume labels, colour printed ‘à la poupée’ with floral designs: Extrait de Rose et de Pois de senteur, Extrait de Jonquille, Extrait d’Oranges de Portugal, Extrait suave. The largest (Extrait de Rose includes a space below for a text or legend, uninked or cancelled in this example, but with traces of the engraved text visible. A charming and rare example of this colour printing technique in which each impression contains all the colours at once, with inks carefully applied to the plate with a cushion-headed tool (the ‘poupée’ or doll). The technique is immediately recognisable from the gentle gradations between the various colours of the resulting imprint.

First edition (a second appeared in 1788). ‘The book is a survey of existing information concerning various kinds of airs and the experiments and discoveries of Lavoisier, Priestley, Scheele and others.The author presents his ideas concerning the nature of gases (pure air, oxygen is the basis of all), phlogiston, heat, combustion, acidity (oxygen not the necessary constituent), etc.’ (Cole). ‘..all combustibles (including perhaps diamond) contain inflammable air, which he identified with phlogiston and thought it is contained in metals...He called oxygen ‘pure air’ and nitrogen (phlogisticated air) ‘impure air’. Pure air consists of vesicles inflated by the principle of heat. Nitrous air (nitrous oxide) is a compound of nitric acid and inflammable air or phlogiston. Fixed air, which he called ‘acid air’, can be converted into phlogisticated air or into pure air.’ (Partington). Cole, Chemical Literature 742; Partington, III, pp. 494-95; Wellcome III, 438a.

An idiosyncratic personal index of useful and curious facts, mainly geographical, in part forming an index to the Encyclopédie Méthodique (which had been issued in print without an index), a gazetteer to its Atlas, and an index to various other books, such as Valmont de Bomare’s Histoire Naturelle and Lacroix’s Géographie. A homespun affair, the volume is rather haphazardly arranged and presented in homemade boards covered in rather fine contemporary wallpaper. It includes references to regions, cities and landmarks in Europe, Asia, Africa and America (the latter including mentions of Cabot, Columbus and Penn) and several ingenious diagrams of the rivers of France.

First edition of this comprehensive study of human fertility, infertility and artificial insemination. ‘Notre livre est surtout destiné aux familles qui sont désolées de rester sans enfants.’ A practical and populist approach to the scientific facts with an extraordinary sequence of vignettes by José Roy.

An excellent French herbier, the typical means of record for amateur naturalists in France, who seem to have preferred the specimen itself over a painted or drawn representation. Each plant is captioned with name, location and (sometimes) year of collection.

The naive but elegant watercolours here include ginger, eggplant, hot pepper, strawberry, mulberry, lily, carnation, marigold, vetch, hypericum and orchid.

Two provincial handbills, from Bedford and Sleaford, advertising ascents by pioneering balloonist Richard Gypson, who toured Britain and the Europe with his balloon.

First edition of this extraordinary treatise on the status of eunuchs in society, according to civil and canon law. Largely based on classical sources, history and (most interestingly) anecdotal evidence from the Orient, Ancillon considers the reasons for the phenomenon (including slavery, household, employment or punishment for sexual misdemeanour). The major contention is that while civil law permits a eunuch to marry, canon law should forbid it (as it did) on the grounds that a marriage could not be consummated. Along the way Ancillon recounts numerous anecdotes of famous eunuchs, notably Abelard, castrated at the instigation of Heloise’s family.

The book was later translated into English by Robert Samber as part of Edmund Curll’s Eunuchism display’d (1718).

This copy of Traité des Eunuques is one of at least two issues of the same year with slightly different paginations and title ornaments. The ‘Epitre dedicatoire’ is signed: ‘C. d’Ollincan’ an anagram of the author’s real name. Gay III, 1239.

This portrait is a naive interpretation of the classic image of Ramon Llull (c. 1232- c. 1315), Catalan mystic and mathematician. It is derived from the engraved portrait which first appeared in the seventeenth century Bibliotheca Chalcographia published by Jacques Boissard and Theodor de Bry in 1664.

First edition: a rare poem on the behaviour and cultivation of bees, copiously and diversely annotated with references to bees in Classical literature; crocodile anatomy; Jesuit activity in South America, etc. Murphy was a close friend of Samuel Johnson, also to the Thrales, to whose sixth child, Susanna Arabella, he dedicates the present work. British Bee Books 157. ESTC locates 9 copies, of which only three in America (Library Company of Philadelphia, Minnesota, Yale).

[bound with:]

—————. The English Garden: a Poem. Book the second... York: Printed by A. Ward; and sold by J. Dodsley... T. Cadell... and H. Denoyer... London; also by J. Todd... York. 1777. [and:]

—————. The English Garden: a Poem. Book the third... London: Printed by H. Goldney, for J. Dodsley... and T. Cadell... and sold by J. Todd... York. 1779. [And:]

—————. The English Garden: a Poem. Book the fourth... York Printed by A. Ward: and sold by J. Dodsley... T. Cadell... and R. Fauldner... London; and J. Todd, in York. 1781.

4 parts in one vol., 4to (255 × 203 mm), pp. [2], 35, [1]; [2], 33, [1]; 32; [2], 54, plus final blank; without the half-titles to second and third parts, the general title to the fourth part, and final advertisement leaf to the second part; some spotting in places; crease to title of first part; recent half leather, cloth sides.

Second edition of the first part, first editions of the other three. A rare collection, Mason’s ‘magnum opus, The English Garden (4 books, 1772–81), over 2400 lines of blank verse based on Virgil’s Georgics, a didactic poem concerning landscape, art, and gardening’ (Oxford DNB). The intersection of these three arts were a defining feature of late eighteenth-century aesthetics, Horace Walpole writing in 1773: ‘Poetry, Painting and Gardening, or the science of Landscape, will forever by men of Taste be deemed Three Sisters, or the “Three New Graces” who dress and adorn Nature’. Jackson, pp. 13, 53, 71, and 86; Gaskell 20, 24, and 26.

First edition. Edward Jerningham’s anonymously published imitation of Gray's Elegy, Il Latte takes a positive view of breastfeeding among mothers and censures the fashion among the better-off for putting children out to nurse. ‘The purport of this poem with this affected title, is to exhort mothers to nurse their children at their own breasts; and nothing certainly can be more proper or more natural. If strains like these, ye matrons, can have any influence upon you; let it not be in vain that the poet says, Unsway’d by fashion’s dull, unseemly jest, / Still to your bosom that your infant cling, / There banquet off an ever-welcome guest, / Unblamed inebriate at that healthful spring’ (Monthly Review).

‘That sacred shrine! where female virtue glows,
Where ev’n the Graces all their treasures bring,
And where the lily, temper'd with the rose,
Harmonious contrast! breathes an Eden spring:

That shrine! where Nature with presaging aim,
What time her friendly aid Lucina brings,
The snowy nectar pours, delightful stream!
Where flutt’ring Cupids dip their purple wings’.

First edition of this French translation by doctor and philologist Lefebvre de Villebrune.

[bound with:] ROUGET, Antoine D. Méthode nouvelle pour arrêter une hémorragie uterine après l'accouchement, occasionnée par l'inertie de la matrice, avec diverses observations pratiques, ainsi que la description et gravure d’un tourniquet nouveau, propre à comprimer l'artère axillaire à son origine. Paris: Allut, 180[7]. pp. 48 plus engraved plate.

2 works bound together, 8vo (192 × 120 mm). Contemporary quarter calf, gilt panelled spine, boards covered with sprinkled vellum, reused from an earlier manuscript. Joints cracked, with slight worming at head, but secure, front free endpaper removed.

First editions of two works, the most interesting of which is probably the first. Taranget was a pioneer of vaccination against small-pox in France, carrying out a major campaign in the Northern region of Douai. Réflexions sur la vaccine contains the results of that campaign, in the form of the tables, which list each individual’s name, occupation, address and outcome of their treatment. An introductory chapter gives an account of Jenner’s experiments of the 1790s. A later autograph letter (8 March 1827) in his characteristic minute hand is loosely inserted. Taranget: Bn, Wellcome and Harvard only in Worldcat; Rouget: no copies outside France.

First edition, privately printed. The limitation notice reads ‘This Edition is issued to Subscribers only and limited to two hundred and fifty copies, numbered and signed by the Author. The price will be doubled after first of March, 1931’. This copy is, however, unsigned and unnumbered. The work forms issue no. 5 of The Lugano Series.

‘From 1920 until 1937 Douglas was settled in Florence... As his fame grew, he became much visited by inter-war writers, and forged close friendships with D. H. Lawrence and Bryher. During these years he lived with the publisher Giuseppe (Pino) Orioli, who helped him publish several limited editions, most of which were later commercially published in London... In 1937 Douglas was forced to flee Florence after the police made enquiries concerning his friendship with a ten-year-old local girl’ (Katherine Mullin in Oxford DNB).

First edition of this Latin-German-English-French dictionary of plant names for farming, horticulture, forestry and pharmacy. It became a standard botanical dictionary and ran to several editions.

First edition. A rare little collection for animal-lovers, with over 60 anecdotes illustrating the characteristics of dogs (mainly) and cats, with titles such as ‘The faithful poodle’, ‘Siberian sledge-dogs’, ‘The surgeon and the dog’, ‘Strange punishment by a poodle’, ‘Remarkable rescue by a dog’, ‘The hunting dog’, ‘The life and times of a pomeranian’. For cat lovers, there are stories such as ‘The amusing education of a cat’ (from Campe’s Kinderbibliothek) and ‘The prisoner and the cat’. Worldcat locates copies at College of William & Mary (VA) and Staatsbibliothek only.

First edition of one of the earliest works in Italian on electricity and one of the earliest Italian books on any branch of physics to be written from a Newtonian perspective. Sguario is generally considered the first writer on electricity in Italy: a country which also produced electrical pioneers Aldini, Galvani and Volta. Wheeler Gift 336; Waller 11434; Blake 429.

A very rare handbill. The Eagle was ‘an airship designed by the Comte de Lennox in 1834 to create a direct communication link between the capitals of Europe. The first aerial ship of its kind, it was exhibited in the grounds of the Aeronautical Society in Kensington, London... The ship was cylindrical with conical ends and had eight paddle-shaped flaps, four on either side, which were intended to be worked backwards and forwards manually by a series of cords and chains. However, the airship proved too heavy to lift its own weight and was destroyed by onlookers after a failed ascent from the Champ de Mars, Paris, on 17th August 1834’ (Science Museum, Science and Society Picture Library online). Though several prints and pamphlets accompanied the exhibition of the Eagle, most are very rare. Worldcat lists a single copy: University of Pennsylvania