Description:
Unknown edition, dated 1863, title page, vi, 832 pp. 8vo (22cm tall), original dark brown blind-tooled cloth boards with more recent black leather spine with gilt lettering. Boards with some small marks and scratches, marbled textblock edges, internally clean and bright with some small stains.Alphonso Wood was an American botanist and educator who did more than any of his contemporaries to make botany popular and accessible to students of the subject. Although not the most eminent figure in his field, his readable botany textbooks were widely used in schools in 19th-century North America. Naturally for the time, the book's introduction approaches the subject from a creationist perspective, arguing that the mechanical structure, function, physiology and life cycle of plants as well as their interrelationships with Man are divinely predetermined. Nevertheless, the text does encourage the student to study plants as a means of self-improvement in combination with seeking pleasure.
