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A Treatise of Gauging: Or, the Modern Practical Gauger. Illustrated with necessary Examples - Thomas Moss

1779 - Printed for G. Robinson, London - The Third Edition, Greatly Enlarged and Improved by the Author
Illustrated with large folding plate to the rear, and numerous in-text diagrams and tables. All editions of this work are scarce.

The complexities of measuring the amount of a liquid when in a cask led to many advancements in practical mathematics including the use of the slide-rule.

Obviously without accurate measurements an excise officer would have found life rather difficult having to rely on the distilleries creative measurements...

A "gauger" was an officer whose business it was to ascertain the contents of casks, mainly to assist in the prevention of illicit shipments of alcohol. In so doing it was necessary to apply and in some cases adapt mathematical formulae which were considered extremely advanced at the time.

Thomas Moss, an exciseman and gauger, was also a well known mathematician, publishing the ‘
Mathematical Magazine’ together with George Witchell (1738-85), and being referenced for his clear and concise early descriptions of a number of geometrical properties. 
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Price HK$ 4,000



Healths Improvement: or, Rules Comprising and Discovering The Mature, Method, and Manner of Preparing all sorts of Food Used in this Nation. - Thomas Muffett (Moffett), Christopher Bennet

1655 - Printed by Tho: Newcomb for Samuel Thornton, at the sign of the white Horse in Pauls Churchyard - First Edition
Written by that ever Famous Thomas Muffett, Doctor in Physick: Corrected and Enlarged by Christopher Bennet, Doctor in Physick, and Fellow of the Colledg of Physitians in London.

Scarce first edition of this posthumous work, which André Simon said was “probably compiled about 1595. Some chapter headings will give an idea of the scope of this work, which is composed throughout in a gossipy and very readable style. ‘
What Diet is’. ‘How it is to be chosen’. ‘Of Meats’. ‘Of the flesh of tame beasts’. ‘Of the flesh of wild fowl’ . . .”

From the collection of noted bibliophile and perfectionist, Brent Gration-Maxfield, with his neat pencil annotation to the front.

See page 154, where Muffett describes the flying fish he was shown by his friend Sir Francis Drake.

The work includes the important observation, made for the first time, that eating liver is beneficial to certain eye diseases. It also contains the first list of British wildfowl, and recognition of their migratory habits.
 
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Price HK$ 35,000



Man-Eaters of Tsavo - with - In the Grip of the Nyika - Lieut.-Col. J. H. Patterson

1907 - Macmillan and Co., London - First Editions, third/second printings (same year as first).
‘We were never long without excitement of some kind or another at Tsavo. When the camp was not being attacked by man-eating lions, it was visited by leopards, hyenas, wild dogs, wild cats and other inhabitants of the jungle around us.’

A scarce bright and sharp pair. Profusely illustrated with black and white photographs and maps.
The Man-Eaters of Tsavo contains Colonel John Henry Patterson’s legendary account of hunting down two man-eating Tsavo lions, which at the time were believed to have killed 135 people, while he was overseeing the construction of a railroad bridge in East Africa, in 1898. Together with In the Grip of the Nyika, the account of Colonel John Henry Patterson’s hunting trips during his later expeditions to East Africa, it includes reminiscences of the Tsavo man-eaters episode, as well as his various experiences on safari, his visit to Nairobi, and his numerous encounters with big game animals, including lions, elephants, and rhino. 
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Price HK$ 6,000



The Kingdom of the Pearl - L Rosenthal, Edmund Dulac (illustrator)

1920 - Nisbet &, London - Limited Edition copy 12 of 100, signed by Dulac
A superb large quarto limited and signed edition of Dulac's illustrated book masterpiece. One of 100 copies, commissioned by famed Parisian jeweller, Léonard Rosenthal.

‘Each one of these plates is a work of art, and the matter of the book itself is an engrossing history of pearls, their culture, their treatment, their myths and legends, and the narratives of famous stones. The book combines romance and instruction.’ -
The New York Times (4 December, 1921)

Dulac uses techniques borrowed from Persian manuscripts, such as overwashing the watercolours with silver and gold. Those approaches produced stunning results, contributing to the gem-like quality of the ten exquisite tipped-in plates with captioned tissue guards.
 
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Price HK$ 14,000



Mountain Monarchs : Wild Sheep & Goats of the Himalayas - George B. Schaller

1977 - University of Chicago Press, Chicago - First Edition
First edition in elusive dust jacket. The first detailed behavioural study of mountain ungulates in a little studied region - the Himalaya. Illustrated throughout.

In 1968, the intrepid George Schaller began a three year study in the vast mountainous and forested regions of Central and Southern Asia, focusing his research on six species of wild sheep and goat – Punjab urial, Persian wild goat, markhor, Himalayan tahr, Nilgiri tahr, and bharal, or blue sheep.

During part of his travels through the Himalayas to study the bharal, or blue sheep, and to possibly to catch a glimpse of the rare and elusive snow leopard, Schaller was accompanied by writer Peter Matthiessen, who would later write his own account of the journey in his award-winning book,
The Snow Leopard, referring to Schaller throughout the work as ‘GS’.

Schaller is indeed one of only two Westerners known to have seen a snow leopard in Nepal between 1950 and 1978.
 
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Price HK$ 1,800



Racing to Win. The Book of the Gurnays - Fred Shaw, S. W. E. Bishop

1952 - Teddington All-British Racing Publishing Co., Middlesex - Second Edition
A nice clean copy of a scarce title on the world's greatest strain of racing pigeons, first published in 1949 and then expanded with added introductions shortly after Shaw’s death. Illustrated throughout with 31 full page black and white photographs.

‘His genius as a pigeon racer is equalled only by his genius as a writer, as this book will testify and as his contributions to the world’s leading pigeon journal,
Pigeon Racing News and Gazette, have confirmed on numerous occasions. Here, between the covers of this literary masterpiece, reside both the story and the wisdom of one of the greatest pigeon fanciers the world has known, the incomparable Fred Shaw, of Lancashire.’ - S. W. E. Bishop. 
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Price HK$ 2,500



Pagan Races of the Malay Peninsula - Walter William Skeat, Charles Otto Blagden

1906 - Macmillan &, London - First Edition
A large and comprehensive two volume ethnographic study on the manners, customs, religion, and language of the peoples of the Malay Peninsula.

Profusely illustrated. Skeats adds a bibliography of most of the early literature, consisting of mainly travelogues and reports by colonial administrators and a few scholarly journal articles.

‘Skeat went to much trouble to obtain a large and comprehensive collection of photographs for use as illustrations, which are an excellent record of aboriginal life in his time. He also wrote an Introduction entitled '
Environment', which is a first-rate description of the Malayan jungle and its flora and fauna as a habitat, and he also included a bibliography which, among other things, takes in the work of continental scholars of his day on Malayan aborigines.’ - [J.M. Gullick, The Skeat Collection, Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology, University of Oxford] 
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Price HK$ 3,800



A Treatise on Cyder-Making - Hugh Stafford, Anonymous

1753 - Printed for E. Cave, London - First Edition
Legendary and rare first edition of this anonymous work, all of which is generally but erroneously attributed to Hugh Stafford who contributed the sixteen page ‘Dissertation on Cyder and Cyder-Fruit’ at the beginning.

Covering the entire process from identifying and growing the best cider apples, collection, pressing, fermentation, racking, preserving and remedial action for a variety of issues ‘
which are incident to Cyder’. With fold-out engraving of cider press (opp. p.32), in-text wood-cut diagrams to pages 43 and 68 (‘One side of the framed Press...’.) and wood-cut decorations to pages v, 47, and 61.

As Cyder therefore is generally allowed to be an wholesome drink, and as it is the natural product of our own country, he will surely be thought to contribute something towards the good of the public, who gives infallible directions for making it universally agreeable by varrying it so as to suit every palate, and by improving the flavour and the quality, both of the rough and the smooth, divesting it of its tendency to produce cholics, and giving it the sparkle of Champaign, without an eager and windy fermentation, and rendering it more spirituous than a small wine tho' less inflaming’. [Preface]

An influential work, Benjamin Franklin, who was partial to a drop himself, ordered three copies to be reprinted as pamphlets and distributed amongst the New England farmers after failing with their vineyards. It was plagiarised into various publications including encyclopaedias, cookbooks and later reference works related to cider.
 
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Price HK$ 42,000



 
Results 25 - 32 of 35 results