The Arcana of Arts and Sciences, or, Farmer's & Mechanics' Manual. Containing a Great Variety of Valuable Receipts and Useful Discoveries

Washington, PA: Printed by J. Grayson, 1824. 12mo. 168 x 100 mm. (6 1/2 x 3 3/4 inches). [2] p. l., 7-348pp. Contemporary brown calf, label on spine; rubbed at edges, but sound and attractive; paper browned but flexible throughout. Very good copy of the only edition of Dr. Parker's manual on agriculture and the industrial and useful arts. Many of the topics he covers include receipts and instructions for successful outcomes. In the first part of the book Parker focus's his attention on the preparation of the soil for a variety of food crops like rye, barley, buckwheat, and potatoes. He talks a great deal about insects and other forces that damage crops and offers solutions for protecting the crops until harvest time. In the section on the useful arts he spends nearly 40 pages on dye making and bleaching, an essential treatment for cloth manufacture. He follows this section with receipts for preparing and mixing colors, staining wood, mixing ingredients to create varnishes, metal working, bronzing, lacquering and Japanning. He finishes his ambitious manual with information on leather tanning, glass making, distilling and animal husbandry. At the end of the book he provides a six-and-a-half-page list of subscribers, including hundreds of names. One wonders how a book with so many subscribers is so rare in the trade. Perhaps because the book was used to death and few survived intact. Shaw & Shoemaker 17520. Rink 197 listing 7 copies, NUC lists 9 copies; not found in OCLC. The collation of this copy is the same as in NUC and Rink. Very good copy of a scarce manual for the farmers and mechanics which guided the development of the early American economy. (369).