The Gardener's Remembrancer; Exhibiting the Nature of Vegetable Life and the Effects of Vegetation; and Containing Practicable Methods of Gardening, Both in the Natural Way, and in the Artificial Forcing Scheme; Adapted either to Small or Large Gardens by MacPhail, James - 1819

London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme & Brown, 1819. [the title continues: "to which is now added the culture of the cucumber; the plan of a lately invented brick frame for forcing fruits, flowers and esculent vegetables, without the influence of fire-heat".]. Second edition. Illustrated with one folding plate (a plan of a forcing frame), small octavo, pp xxxvi, 428, + errata leaf, edges untrimmed, original boards, rubbed and a little worn, recently re-backed with paper spine and label. There is offsetting from the plate to the opposite page of text and some foxing to the plate and occasionally throughout the book, but this is not heavy. The section on vine cultivation has seven pages on which some instructions have been underlined in ink, but this has been done so neatly that it almost looks as though it it part of the printing. Bound in at the front is a 12 page bookseller's catalogue. This is an uncut and unpressed copy, and as close to its original state is is likely to be found. A great copy. [Loudon referred to MacPhail as "an excellent grower of pines and melons", but it is perhaps for his culture of cucumbers that he is best remembered. His brick forcing frame, illustrated in this work, was described by Rogers (1839) as " an excellent invention that has certainly rendered the forcing of this vegetable more simple....there are few gentleman's gardens and few principal market gardens without them". He was gardener to Lord Hawkesbury at Addiscombe Place, Croydon, for nearly twenty years.]. Second edition. Boards. Very Good.