Description

8vo hard rebound in black boards witn silver lettering., xvi-375pp. complete, yellowing of pages due to age, limited flowerings, later sturdy binding. Frontis map, in text line drawings and full-page tinted plates. front and end papers in delicate orange ink showing marriage procession and chinese funeral (tape repair to last page of the one at the end, identical to the ones in front). Includes publisher's biographical foreword, absent in earlier editions. Special Limited Edition of 1,000 copies, this copy not numbered. high quality paper, printing and plate reproductions, quite rare. even scarcer than the original 1847 London edition. Fortune was the first plant collector to travel in China after the conclusion of the Opium War, as a botanical collector for the Horticultural Society of London starting in 1843. Travel was not allowed for more than 30 miles past Shanghai, but he set off by boat from Shanghai, in Chinese costume complete with shaved head and pigtail and was the first westerner to reach Soochow and many other parts of China, collecting large numbers of plants and seeds. The book contains two chapters on the cultivation and manufacture of tea with suggestions on the possibilities of developing a tea industry in India.