Nature's Garden: An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and Their Insect Visitors
New York: Doubleday, Page & Co., 1900.
First Edition. Hardcover. "Is it enough to know merely the name of the flower you meet in the meadow? The blossom has an inner meaning, hopes and fears that inspire its brief existence, a scheme of salvation for its species in the struggle for survival that it has been slowly perfecting with some insect's help through the ages..." So does historian and nature writer Blanchan De Graff Doubleday (1865–1918) introduce her generously-sized contribution to garden literature, devoted to not only flowers, but the rich, interdependent relationship between blossom, yes, and also...bug. After all, "it seems fully time that the vitally important and interesting relationship existing between our common wild flowers and their winged benefactors should be presented in a popular book." Illustrated in nearly 80 plates, many in full color, by Henry Troth and A. R. Dugmore, this 1900 first edition features over five hundred flowers with notes on their ongoing romance with bees, night-flying moths, butterflies, wasps, and other "winged benefactors."
10 3/8" X 7 3/4". xvi, 415pp. Presents nicely in protective archival jacket. Bound in full grass green cloth over boards, with four irises stamped in white and yellow to upper board, lettered in white to upper board and in gilt to spine. Mild wear to binding, with some soiling and scattered rubbing to cloth and hard bumping to frayed head and tail of spine. Pictorial endpapers. Bookseller's ticket of Brentano's to rear pastedown. Hinges tender; binding remains sound. Small tear to margin of half-title. Floral specimen laid in between pages 28 and 29. Pages are clean and unmarked. Illustrated in nearly 80 plates, many in full color, by Henry Troth and A. R. Dugmore. Good +. Item #12906
Price: $105.00