[SURVEYING, DIALLING AND NAVIGATION]

Book Description

Enland, [1690]. Full Leather. Very Good. [England, c. 1690] 8vo (14 x 8.5 cm.). 17th century sheep. Manuscript notes on 124 un-numbered pages (ff. 11r, 30r&v, 61r and 62v blank, written mostly on both sides). Binding has edge wear. The volume was initially a blank book on which the writers put their notes. There appears to be two hands involved in the writing. A number of pages have been removed in the center and end of the book with some evidence that text was present. In the center section where pages were removed the next page contains French text with the verso reverting to English. The text is supplemented with numerous ink illustrations of trigonomic, geometric, and other diagrams. After a preliminary few pages about the mosques of the Turks (pp. 1-8), the hand changes, and the subject becomes entirely mathematical, dealing with units of measure, square roots, the rule of three etc., before passing on to how to survey mountainous terrain and the surveying of a lordship (the manor of Beauchamp in York is mentioned) and arable land etc. There then follow some leaves of a general geometrical nature. The remainder of the text is mostly concerned with navigation, ending with how "to draw Mercator's charte" on 60v. The text is written in a very small neat hand (36 lines plus to a full page of manuscript), with many diagrams, and is for the most part in English, but there are several pages (or parts) in French (e.g. 10r&v) and on 12r there are several lines of text in Dutch.

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