The Herbal Encyclopaedia or Botanical, Medical, and Agricultural Dictionary (4-Volume Set)

The Herbal Encyclopaedia, originally published in 1820, is one of the most widely acknowledged classic on the subject, which went into several editions when it was first published under the title "The Universal Herbal". It quickly established itself as an authentic work of reference and was instrumental in laying the rules for the methodology of preparing such copious reference works in Botanical Sciences thereafter.

The obvious design of this work was to present a compendium of botanical, agricultural, and medical knowledge, collected from the accumulated labours of the most eminent authors, and hitherto only to be obtained in separate and very voluminous publications.

The Herbal Encyclopaedia is a valuable resource for those seeking more than the usual aspects of learning about our planet's valuable treasure of the plant world. Besides medicinal information, as well as beneficial properties of herbs information on the properties of each herb and their culinary, medical and commercial uses. It not only covers the history of herbs, it shows you the practical uses and gives a comprehensive list of herbs with their cultivation, propagation and harvesting information.

The explanatory plates which exhibit the various kinds of leaves, trunks, roots, armature of plants, and more especially those which present the parts of fructification, the classes and orders of the sexual system, with the Dictionary of Botanical Terms, will introduce the reader into the midst of this delightful science. The book provides succinct instructions how to ascertain to what class, order, genus, or section, any known or strange plant belongs; an assistance to which will be found in the index to the classes and orders at the close of the second volume.

The methods of propagation and culture, when peculiar, will be found under each species: but wherever the same treatment applies to a whole genus, the Botanist will find the most explicit directions either immediately following the essential character, or subjoined to the description of the first species, to which all the rest are in the latter case invariably referred.

The very copious Catalogue of Trees and Shrubs, given at the end of the second volume, will at once enable the reader to select such as by their size, qualities, or places of growth, may best suit either general or particular purposes.