Susanne Schulz-Falster Catalogue Ten

directly to spine; covering paper replaced; a Wne set, very clean and
crisp, with the plates in Wne impressions.
Second edition in Dutch, much enlarged, of Chomel’s Dictionaire
Oeconomique. Chomel’s dictionary was to have an impact far beyond Europe.
It was in this second edition, edited by Chalmot and enlarged to more
than twice the original size, that Chomel’s dictionary was introduced by the
Dutch to Japan and was translated into Japanese, ‘the encyclopaedia that
proved so useful to the Japanese’ (Blussé, p. 111).
Chomel’s dictionary of agriculture and house-keeping covers an extensive
array of subjects, including gardening, botany, gastronomy, viticulture,
hunting, medicine, together with the more predictable topics of livestock
breeding, bee-keeping, farming, and farm management. The entries are illustrated
with one hundred Wnely engraved fold-out plates. Chomel’s dictionary
was Wrst published in 1709 and went through numerous editions.
An English translation was published in 1725, a German one in 1750.
Goldsmiths’–Kress 4560.5 for Wrst French edition; see Blussé, Bridging the Divide,
400 years the Netherlands – Japan, p. 111.
susanne schulz-falster rare books catalogue ten
72 CICILONI, Ferdinand. A Grammar of the Italian Language.
Florence, Ricordi and Co., 1838. £120
12mo, one folding table; contemporary vellum backed boards.
First Italian edition of this useful grammar of the Italian language, which
was Wrst published in London in 1825. Ciciloni gives a comprehensive
overview over Italian grammar and illustrates each section with numerous
examples and added word lists. The last section contains extensive exercises
for each chapter, with some vocabulary help.
NUC lists just one copy (NNC).
73 [CIPHERING BOOK.] Manuscript Account Book in French,
signed, n.p., 1803. £650
Tall folio (380x250mm), ll. 84, light-blue laid paper, written in a clear,
elegant hand, with numerous Xourishes and decorations, using black,
red and green ink; signed and dated by Lagarde, with a Wnal sketch of
cadet on last page; bound in full vellum
An attractive French ‘ciphering book’. The practice of teaching arithmetic
with the help of ciphering books rather than printed manuals continued
until well into the early nineteenth century. The student was equipped with
a blankbook, given a mathematical problem and told the rule for its solution.
This is a rather splendid example of such a book. Basic arithmetical
operations are only touched on, then more complicated commercial transactions
are explained and presented in beautiful script. In each case a brief
outline of the problem is given, then the calculation, followed in some case
by the rule applicable. Most of the examples are clearly commercial, covering
sales, investments, interest rates, and there is even a curious one calcu-