A Treatise on Citrus Culture in California.
Sacramento, Cal. State Office: J.D. Young, Supt. State Printing, 1888.
Slim octavo (23 x 15 cm,), 96 pages. Illustrated with a chromolithograph frontispiece and wood engravings throughout. Several errata have been overprinted in purple ink (rubber stamp?). FIRST EDITION. Byron Martin Lelong (1856-1901) was the Secretary of California's State Board of Horticulture, and amongst a generation of farmer-scholars working and publishing in California in the 1880s and 90s. Others included Thomas Garey and William Andrew Spaulding, and in a different way, Santa Rosa's Luther Burbank, the great seedsman. Lelong's published work focused on citrus, as well as prunes, figs, and walnuts. This treatise is mostly a technical manual on the best varieties of oranges and other citrus to plant in California as well as a guide for how to care for them. It also includes recipes for lemon pie, orange souffle, and citron cake. Illustrations show the physical differences in each variety of citrus, including one of the cross section of a "Pumpel-mouse". Boards lightly scuffed with soiling to margins and fading to spine. Corners bumped and gently rubbed with boards bowing out at fore-edge. Rippling to endsheets with page margins lightly toned. Title page offset by frontis. Text has overprinted errata in blue to correct spellings to a few pages. In publisher's dark blue pebble-grained cloth lettered in gilt. Overall, very good or better. Presentation slip tipped in at first free endsheet, presented by Ellwood Cooper, the then-president of California's Board of Horticulture. [Zamorano Select 65].
Price: $450.00