To save content items to your account,
please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies.
If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account.
Find out more about saving content to .
To save content items to your Kindle, first ensure no-reply@cambridge.org
is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings
on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part
of your Kindle email address below.
Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations.
‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi.
‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
A keen collector and sketcher of plant specimens from an early age, the author, educator and clergyman Charles Alexander Johns (1811–74) gained recognition for his popular books on British plants, trees, birds and countryside walks. Flowers of the Field (1851), one of several works originally published by the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, is also reissued in this series. First published by the Society between 1847 and 1849, this two-volume botanical guide for amateur enthusiasts focuses on the trees found in British woodland. Johns describes each species, noting also pests and diseases, uses for the wood, and associated myths and legends. The work is noteworthy for its meticulous engravings of leaves, seeds and blossom, and of the trees in natural settings. Volume 1 (1847) provides an introduction to the botanical terms used. The species covered in this volume include oak, ash, beech and poplar.
This survey, and fascinating history, of the public green spaces of London was published in 1898. Its author, John J. Sexby, the Chief Officer of Parks of the London County Council, is described as a lieutenant-colonel and a professional associate of the Surveyors' Institution, from which it can be deduced that he probably worked as a surveyor in the army. His skills as a horticulturalist and garden designer cannot be doubted, and he left his mark on many of the municipal parks and gardens about which he writes with such enthusiasm. Sexby focuses on the municipal parks (those maintained by local authorities) rather than the nationally managed parks in central London. He describes large open spaces such as Hampstead Heath as well as small, disused churchyards like that of St Dunstan's in Stepney, providing details of their former owners and use as well as their present condition.
George Bentham (1800–84) was one of Britain's most influential botanists, whose own collection of plant specimens numbered more than 100,000. Although he donated his herbarium to the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew in 1854, he continued to make significant contributions to the field, including this exhaustive, seven-volume work detailing the plant life of Australia, which was published from 1863 to 1878. It was part of a series of works commissioned by the British government to document the flora in its colonies. Using the extensive numbers of specimens at Kew - and with the help of Ferdinand Mueller (1825–96), a German botanist in Australia - Bentham was able to compile descriptions of more than 8,000 species of Australian plants, making these volumes the first completed compendium of the flora of any large continental area. Volume 3, published in 1866, describes 14 orders of dicotyledon flora in the subclasses polypetalae and monopetalae.
The physician and author John Ayrton Paris (1785–1856), several of whose other medical and popular works have been reissued in the Cambridge Library Collection, published the first edition of this book in 1812. It was immediately successful, and went into eight further editions until 1843: this reissue is of the 1820 third edition. Many volumes on materia medica existed at the time, and Paris claims in his preface that he is not disparaging these competitor works, but that they presume too much prior knowledge on the part of the reader. His own work is designed to inform the student of the properties and effects of each medicinal substance, and how they function, both alone and in combinations. This will lead to greater understanding of the efficacy of medicines, and also help to prevent their adulteration. The qualities of each ingredient are discussed, and formulae and doses provided.
An Irish-born gardener and writer, William Robinson (1838–1935) travelled widely to study gardens and gardening in Europe and America. He founded a weekly illustrated periodical, The Garden, in 1871, which he owned until 1919, and published numerous books on different aspects of horticulture. Topics included annuals, hardy perennials, alpines and subtropical plants, as well as accounts of his travels. This book, his most famous work, was first published in 1883, and fifteen editions were issued in his lifetime. It has been described as 'the most widely read and influential gardening book ever written'. Aimed at both amateurs and experienced gardeners, it sets out clearly the different types of plant suitable for each type of situation, and how to grow them. Robinson advocated a revolution in garden design, rejecting the more formal flower-beds which had long been popular in favour of a more natural and individual style.
Henry Pearson (1870–1916) was an English botanist specialising in research on the Gnetophyta division of woody plants. In 1903 he was elected to the Henry Bolus Professorship of Botany at the South African College, Cape Town (now known as the University of Cape Town), and he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1916 shortly before his death. In 1915 Pearson was commissioned to write this volume for the Cambridge Botanical Handbooks series. Published posthumously in 1929, it was the first extensive study on the Gnetales order and the only such study in English published during the twentieth century. In it, Pearson investigates the morphology and reproduction of the three Gnetophyta genera and examines their relation to the angiosperms (flowering plants). His research on Gnetophyta was later used together with genetic studies to provide theories explaining the evolution of seed plants.
James Shirley Hibberd (1825–90) was a journalist and horticultural writer who worked as a bookseller before devoting his time to researching and lecturing and publishing on gardening. An active member of the Royal Horticultural Society, he edited several gardening magazines including Floral World, and his writing was widely enjoyed and respected. This book, first published in 1856, is Hibberd's carefully researched and practical guide to decorating the home and garden. Hibberd explains the practical aspects of garden design, the pleasures of bee-keeping, and how to construct a pond or aquarium. Full of useful advice on everything from preserving cut flowers to the ideal species of bird to keep in an aviary, this is a charming and enjoyable manual for the Victorian gardener which was very popular in its time, and remains a useful source for the cultural historian as well as an entertaining treat for the general reader.
This world-famous work was begun by Sir William Jackson Hooker (1785–1865) in 1837, and the ten volumes reissued here were produced under his authorship until 1854, at which point his son, Joseph Dalton Hooker (1817–1911) continued the work of publication. Hooker's own herbarium, or collection of preserved plant specimens, was so extensive that at one point he stored it in one house and lived in another; it was left to the nation on his death. Each volume contains 100 line drawings of plants, and each is accompanied by a full Latin description, with notes in English on habitat and significant features. The order of the plants in each volume is not systematic, but two 'indexes' at the beginning provide plant lists, in alphabetical order and 'arranged according to the natural orders'.
This world-famous work was begun by Sir William Jackson Hooker (1785–1865) in 1837, and the ten volumes reissued here were produced under his authorship until 1854, at which point his son, Joseph Dalton Hooker (1817–1911) continued the work of publication. Hooker's own herbarium, or collection of preserved plant specimens, was so extensive that at one point he stored it in one house and lived in another; it was left to the nation on his death. Each volume contains 100 line drawings of plants, and each is accompanied by a full Latin description, with notes in English on habitat and significant features. The order of the plants in each volume is not systematic, but two 'indexes' at the beginning provide plant lists, in alphabetical order and 'arranged according to the natural orders'.
This seminal publication began life as a collaborative effort between the Irish botanist William Henry Harvey (1811–66) and his German counterpart Otto Wilhelm Sonder (1812–81). Relying on many contributors of specimens and descriptions from colonial South Africa - and building on the foundations laid by Carl Peter Thunberg, whose Flora Capensis (1823) is also reissued in this series - they published the first three volumes between 1860 and 1865. These were reprinted unchanged in 1894, and from 1896 the project was supervised by William Thiselton-Dyer (1843–1928), director of the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew. A final supplement appeared in 1933. Reissued now in ten parts, this significant reference work catalogues more than 11,500 species of plant found in South Africa. Volume 7 comprises sections that were published individually between 1897 and 1900, covering Pontederiaceae to Gramineae.
This seminal publication began life as a collaborative effort between the Irish botanist William Henry Harvey (1811–66) and his German counterpart Otto Wilhelm Sonder (1812–81). Relying on many contributors of specimens and descriptions from colonial South Africa - and building on the foundations laid by Carl Peter Thunberg, whose Flora Capensis (1823) is also reissued in this series - they published the first three volumes between 1860 and 1865. These were reprinted unchanged in 1894, and from 1896 the project was supervised by William Thiselton-Dyer (1843–1928), director of the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew. A final supplement appeared in 1933. Reissued now in ten parts, this significant reference work catalogues more than 11,500 species of plant found in South Africa. Volume 4 appeared in two parts, the second comprising sections published in 1904, covering Hydrophyllaceae to Pedalineae.
The French pharmacist Nicolas Jean-Baptiste Gaston Guibourt (1790–1867) first published this work in two volumes in 1820. It provided methodical descriptions of mineral, plant and animal substances. In the following years, Guibourt became a member of the Académie nationale de médicine and a professor at the École de pharmacie in Paris. Pharmaceutical knowledge also progressed considerably as new methods and classifications emerged. For this revised and enlarged four-volume fourth edition, published between 1849 and 1851, Guibourt followed the principles of modern scientific classification. For each substance, he describes the general properties as well as their medicinal or poisonous effects. Illustrated throughout, Volume 3 (1850) continues to describe plant substances, drawing on the systems of Linnaeus, Jussieu and de Candolle. The volume covers the last two classes of dicotyledons.