TRAITÉ DES PRAIRIES ARTIFICIELLES,

4to, pp. xvi, [iv], 197, [2] approbation, [1] blank; with five engraved plates; woodcut title vignette and head- and tailpieces; occasional very light foxing, but largely clean and fresh thoughout; uncut in contemporary pink boards, title in ink at head of spine; binding partly detached from bookblock, joints worn, and a few ink and other marks on covers, but still an attractive copy.

First edition, uncommon outside France, of this guide to the keeping of English sheep, with particular focus on the land management that enables their grazing.

Encouraged by the late civil engineer and administrator Daniel-Charles Trudaine, Mante's first aim is to advise on the raising of English sheep in the face of a degree of French prejudice against them, but he wants to emphasise that it is through proper land management and the creation of 'terres labourées, prairies artificielles' that this is best to be accomplished. The creation of these is 'a true conquest, an acquisition, an appropriation that enriches one man without destroying others'. Noting that the wealth of poverty of a nation is dependent on the quality of the use of its land, he argues that the wise legislator assists nature in her operations. And so, over five parts, he discusses the creation and maintenance of cultivated pasture (and the plants and herbs to be encouraged), the usefulness of enclosures, the raising of sheep, and finally the preparation of land for the formation of cultivated pasture and the growing of vetch.

The work appeared anonymously, and it is perhaps not hard to see why. Mante (c.1733-1802) was an English army officer, but is better remembered as a double agent for France, where he emigrated in 1773, ostensibly to raise the sheep which had so impressed him on Romney Marsh. He spent time in debtor's prison in France, appears to have been supported to some degree by Turgot, and corresponded with Benjamin Franklin. He was however to return to England in 1781, and was the author of several works on military history and tactics.

Barbier IV, 785; outwith Continental Europe, OCLC records copies at the Hagley Museum and Library, Yale, and Kansas.