{"product_id":"blair-patrick-botanick-essays-in-two-parts-with-many-curious-remarks-and-several-discoveries-and-improvements-adorn-d-with-figures","title":"BLAIR, Patrick. Botanick Essays: in Two Parts … with Many Curious Remarks, and Several Discoveries and Improvements: Adorn’d with Figures ...","description":"\u003ch3 style=\"font-variant: small-caps\"\u003ePlants and Sex\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eBLAIR, Patrick.\u003c\/strong\u003e Botanick Essays: in Two Parts …  with Many Curious Remarks, and Several Discoveries and Improvements: Adorn’d with Figures ... \u003ci\u003eLondon: Printed by W. and J. Innys.\u003c\/i\u003e 1720.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e8vo. Contemporary panelled calf, double-filleted and tooled in blind, spine with raised bands and gilt brown morocco lettering-piece; pp. [36], 414, [2]; 5 copper-engraved folding plates; joints cracked but holding firm, tailcap perished, headcap chipped, extremities lightly rubbed; internally very good.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eFirst edition of Blair’s ‘most outstanding work’, on sexual differentiation in plants, dedicated to Sir Isaac Newton.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe Royal Society granted licence for publication on 22 October 1719, during Newton’s presidency and as the dedicatee of the work; although the title-page is dated 1720, publication likely occurred in late 1719. The work is a systematic treatment of plant generation and fertilisation, combining observational experiment with comparative botanical analysis, and is regarded as a key pre-Linnaean statement of plant sexuality. It comprises a series of essays derived from Royal Society lectures, with experimental observations intended to demonstrate the role of pollen in reproduction and to establish sexual differentiation in plants.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBlair had long-standing connections with the Royal Society, which intervened on his behalf following his capture with the Jacobite army defeated at the Battle of Preston in 1716, securing his reprieve from the death penalty through the influence of Hans Sloane and other Fellows. A surgeon by training, he had earlier served in the British Army before returning to Scotland in 1702, and first attracted notice with his dissection of an elephant exhibited in Dundee in 1706, the results of which were published in \u003ci\u003eOsteographica Elephantina\u003c\/i\u003e in the \u003ci\u003ePhilosophical Transactions\u003c\/i\u003e (1710); he was elected FRS in 1712.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBlair’s findings were sufficiently reproducible to be confirmed by contemporary botanists and gardeners, and were later regarded as contributing materially to the wider acceptance of plant sexual theory in eighteenth-century England. Five engraved folding plates illustrate the experimental apparatus, including devices employed in Blair’s investigations of plant reproduction, together with botanical diagrams of floral and reproductive structures central to his theory of plant sexuality. In 1790, Pulteney described \u003ci\u003eBotanick Essays\u003c\/i\u003e as ‘a most outstanding work’, noting that Blair’s exposition ‘contributed greatly to the extension of the knowledge and the confirmation of the truth of this matter in England’ (quoted in Henrey II, p. 48).\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eESTC T81025; Henrey 456.\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eSKU: \u003c\/strong\u003e2124909\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Henry Sotheran Limited","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":64741463032185,"sku":"2124909","price":850.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0045\/2178\/7426\/files\/2124909b.jpg?v=1790768783","url":"https:\/\/sotherans.co.uk\/products\/blair-patrick-botanick-essays-in-two-parts-with-many-curious-remarks-and-several-discoveries-and-improvements-adorn-d-with-figures","provider":"Sotheran's","version":"1.0","type":"link"}