A Treatise on the Culture and Management of Fruit Trees
$400 USD
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$400 USD
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An English fruit-and-vine manual adapted for America, just as European vinifera met a very different reality
Forsyth, William
A Treatise on the Culture and Management of Fruit Trees
In which a New Method of Pruning and Training is Fully Described (...). To which are added an Introduction and Notes, Adapting the Rules to the Climates and Seasons of the United States by William Cobbett
1803, Albany, D. & S. Whiting
Second American Edition
$400 USD
Sale price
$400 USD
Regular price
Overview
In 8vo. Pp. [4] f.e., xii, 13-280, XIII plates, [4] r.e.
Second edition of William Forsyth's wound-dressing composition for fruit and forest trees, which was significant enough in its day to be examined by Parliament and used on Royal Navy timber during the Napoleonic Wars - genuine period stakes for what might otherwise read as a routine pruning manual. This Albany edition is the second American, following the Philadelphia one of one year prior. William Cobbett supplied the introduction and notes adapting Forsyth's English rules for American climates, addressed as a personal letter to James Paul, Senior, of Bustleton, Pennsylvania, and written, Cobbett says, having withdrawn from the "noise and strife" of politics. The transplantation of Forsyth's English horticulture to America is particularly interesting in the chapter on vines. Forsyth recommends a repertoire of classic European wine and dessert grapes (the Royal Muscadine (Chasselas Blanc), Malmsey Muscadine, Black Muscadine, July Grape, and others) all Vitis vinifera, cultivated in England against warm walls or in vineries. Cobbett's adaptation carried that advice across the Atlantic to growers for whom vinifera cultivation would prove notoriously difficult over the following century, as the eastern United States' climate, native pests, and diseases frustrated European varieties and encouraged increasing reliance on native and hybrid vines. Cobbett's own notes already engage with American uncertainty on the subject, correcting a belief he attributes to American growers that vines are short-lived by pointing to their evident longevity in Britain. Distinctive to this Albany printing is an eight-page letter from Peter W. Yates, dated September 1803, recounting his own experience grafting, inoculating, and pruning fruit trees according to Forsyth's methods since 1796. It provides an unusually appropriate conclusion to the American edition: an Albany grower's practical testimony bound directly into an English treatise already adapted by Cobbett for American conditions.
Inside the book
Forsyth's Treatise, first published in London in 1802, combines his celebrated and controversial wound-dressing composition for hollow and damaged fruit and forest trees with a new system of pruning and training. The text proceeds in numbered chapters through the orchard, treating individual fruits and their cultivation alongside practical problems of pruning, grafting, disease, and damaged wood. Cobbett's "Introduction" occupies the front on the volume, while his "Notes" appear as footnotes scattered throughout the main text, intervening where English horticultural practice requires explanation or adaptation for American readers. Specifically chapter VIII, "Of Vines," covers the different sorts of vines cultivated in England, their propagation, training and pruning (including the application of Forsyth's composition), watering, protection of grapes from flies, wasps, and birds, and gathering and keeping grapes through winter. Named varieties include the July Grape (Morillon Noir Hatif), Royal Muscadine (also called D'Arboyce or Chasselas Blanc), Malmsey Muscadine, Black Muscadine, and White or Common Muscadine. Other chapters include "Of Apricots" and "Of the Canker and Gum," each opening with a descriptive argument line. Thirteen engraved plates illustrate the practical instruction, including the Apricot, Green Gage Plum, Duke Cherry, Standard Apple, St. Germain Pear, a vine-training plate, and a plate showing sixteen numbered pruning and grafting tools. A concluding Supplement is Forsyth's defense of his composition through named case studies. A hollow lime tree, its trunk decayed from top to bottom, had filled entirely with sound new wood fifteen years after treatment; an old elm, twice emptied of cart-loads of rotten wood, had grown twenty feet in six years; and an elm on Palace Green, headed twenty feet from the ground, produced a shoot forty-six feet high and nearly six feet in circumference. The text proper is followed by Peter W. Yates's letter of September 1803, describing his experience since 1796 with grafting, inoculating, and pruning fruit trees according to Forsyth's methods.
Condition
Contemporary full calf, with gilt-lettered label at the spine. Corners bumped; head of the spine chipped, with some wear at the hinges. Top corners of pp. 221 and 223 torn, with no loss of text. Light foxing throughout, heavier on the plates. A sound copy. Very good.
Dimensions (inches): 8 3/4 x 5 1/4 x 1 1/4
Why La Fenice likes it
We love that this book crossed the Atlantic and kind of changed in the process: Cobbett began arguing with American assumptions in the footnotes, the Albany publishers added a local grower's testimonial, and Forsyth's European vines found themselves recommended to a country where vinifera would struggle for the next century.
About the author
William Forsyth (1737-1804), gardener to King George III at Kensington and St James's; his fruit-tree treatise went through seven editions in twenty-two years.
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