DICKSON, Adam.

Edinburgh: Printed by A. Donaldson and J. Reid for the Author, and A. Donaldson… .1762

8vo, pp. xvi, 427, and 2 folding engraved plates on the design of ploughs. Contemporary calf, spine ruled in gilt, red morocco label (joints cracked at head, but firm). With the Minto bookplate on front pastedown; withdrawn library stamp on verso of title, small and unobtrusive stamps to lower corner of several pages and the plates, faint traces of a shelfmark on foot of spine.

FIRST EDITION. “Decidedly the best work on tillage which has appeared in the English language” (J.C. Loudon, quoted by Fussell). Dickson had observed that all existing farming literature was based upon conditions in England and therefore not suitable for application to Scottish farming practice, which the present work set out to rectify. The text is divided into four parts, on vegetation, tillage, manures, and soil. This was author's first book, and one of the most important Scottish agricultural treatises of the eighteenth century. It was, according to Loudon, held in high esteem by generations of the practical farmers of Scotland. Fussell, More Old English Farming Books, p. 56.

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