2000: Two millionth book

2000: Two millionth book

MENZIES rare book   +2195740

This first edition is one of the most attractive of all Australian botanical books and as such was chosen as a fitting two millionth addition to the ANU Library's collection.  This is the third illustrated work devoted to the botany of Australia.  The publication is the first to use live specimens for illustration instead of dried plants and field sketches.  The species depicted were all grown from seed in London nurseries and were thus drawn as live plants, a method adopted from Joseph Banks.  Sweet was a horticulturist, rather than a scientific botanist or botanical artist.  He was more interested in the cultivation than the classification of exotic plants.  This copy has bright hand colouring to the plates, which were drawn by one of the finest botanical artists of the day - Edwin Dalton Smith of Chelsea, who was for many years attached to the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew.  The copy has the bookplate of Edmund Johnston and was previously in the collection of the celebrated botanical collector Robert de Belder.