PBA Galleries

2 volumes. 330; 393, [1], [viii], 88 pp. Portrait frontispiece and forty engraved plates. (4to) 29.5x23 cm (11¾x9"), period full diced calf, bordered in gilt, rebacked, spines gilt. Third Edition.

Evelyn's classic work on trees, as edited by Edinburgh physician and polymath Alexander Hunter (1729-1809). The first edition of Hunter's version was published in 1776. The treatise on trees was first published in 1664, and on soils, first published in 1676.  Although primarily intended to encourage tree planting after the devastation of the civil war, Sylva was an academic work that was aimed at gentleman on their estates rather than addressed to foresters. In it Evelyn introduced the word 'avenues' into the English language of landscape architecture. By this, the third edition, it contained 'an Historical Account of the Sacredness and Use of Standing Groves' that showed its relation to the Elysium project.