EVELYN, John (1620-1706); ed. Andrew Hunter.
Silva: or, a discourse of forest-trees AND Terra: a philosophical discourse of earth .
Two volumes York: A. Ward for J. Dodsley [et al.], 1776-1786-1787. First Hunter edition of the Silva , second Hunter edition of the Terra.

Quarto (11 7/8" x 9"). With an engraved frontispiece of Evelyn by Bartolozzi and 41 engraved plates including one double-page by J. Miller, and one etched plate in sepia, two folding letter-press tables.

Bound in contemporary tree calf (re-backed with the original back-strip laid down, extremities a bit scuffed).

With the armorial bookplates of Thomas Brooke (of Lough Eske?) to the front paste-down of each volume.

John Evelyn's (1620-1706) pioneering work on tree cultivation, first published in 1664, and on soils, first published in 1676, are fragments of a larger project, the still-unpublished Elysium Britannicum , which survives in manuscript at the British Library. Although intended primarily to encourage tree planting after the drains and damages of the Civil War, Sylva was addressed more to gentlemen than to foresters, a long-running tradition of English botanists. Sylva 's reissue with additional plates by Alexander Hunter in 1776 gave it a renewed popularity.

Keynes, Evelyn 47 (calling for 39 plates) & 98; Henrey 137 (calls for 40 plates); Nissen, BBI 615 (calling for 41 plates, as here, though almost all copies have 40).