Beschreibung:

2 vol., first edition, (second issue title with imprint as below) title to vol.1 with engraved oval vignette, 435 hand-coloured plates on 432 sheets after Sydenham Edwards, James Sowerby and William Kilburn lacking list of subscribers, without the "General Observations on...the best Grasses", and the "Catalogue of certain plants, growing wild in the environs of Settle" occasionally bound into copies, vol.1 p.3 of index with lower corner repaired, letter-press for 'Veronica Agretis' from another copy and torn and repaired with loss of a few letters, 'Medicago Arabica' and 'Lathyrus Pratensis' with large brown spot, vol.2 'Panicum Verticillatum' with short tear at foot, touching title, but with no loss, both vol. occasional spotting or light offsetting, some light browning, but plates generally in good clean condition, 20th century half buckram, [Dunthorne 87; Henrey 595; Great Flower Books p 54; Hunt 650; Nissen 439], folio, Printed for and sold by the Author, at his Botanic-Garden, Lambeth-Marsh; and B.White and Son, Booksellers, in Fleet-Street, 1777-1798. *** The first comprehensive colour-plate English flora. Curtis was praefectus horti (director) of the Society of Apothecaries at the Chelsea Physic Garden in 1772. The following year he established a botanical garden for the cultivation and study of native British plants at Bermondsey. This garden moved twice; first to Lambeth Marsh and later Brompton. He cultivated some 6,000 species from all over the world in his garden, including medicinal and culinary herbs, English wild flowers, trees and shrubs.