POTATOES.. Report of the Committee of the Board of Agriculture, Appointed to Extract Information from the County Reports, and other Authorities, Concerning the Culture and Use of Potatoes.1795

London: Printed by W. Bulmer and Co., for George Nicol, First edition, 4to (270 x 205 mm), viii, [2], 177, [1]pp., without half-title, 7 engraved plates (one folding, one double-page, one slightly cropped), title browned, later green cloth. The author of this important report may well be Sir John Sinclair., President of the Board of Agriculture. The publication had its origins in a speech by Sinclair early in 1795 in which he stressed the scarcity and high price of grain and other 'provisions' and that "the most effective remedy which had occurred to him was, to encourage as much as possible, an increased culture of potatoes, which could be cultivated almost in any ground, and might be planted where wheat could not be raised at all... potatoes would be a certain resource as food for man; or if the crop were abundant, they might be converted to the purpose of fattening stock..." Provenance: From the Royal Agriculture Society Library with their bookplate. Not in Fussell, Rothamsted or Perkins.