Self-instruction for young gardeners, foresters, bailiffs, land-stewards, and farmers; in arithmetic and bookkeeping, geometry, mensuration, and practical trigonometry, mechanics, hydrostatics, and hydraulics, land-surveying, levelling, planning, and mapping, architectural drawing, and isometrical projection and perspective: with examples, showing their application to horticultural and agricultural purposes / By the late J.C. Louden. With a memoir of the author [by Mrs. Loudon].

  • Loudon, J. C. (John Claudius), 1783-1843.
Date:
1845
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Self-instruction for young gardeners, foresters, bailiffs, land-stewards, and farmers; in arithmetic and bookkeeping, geometry, mensuration, and practical trigonometry, mechanics, hydrostatics, and hydraulics, land-surveying, levelling, planning, and mapping, architectural drawing, and isometrical projection and perspective: with examples, showing their application to horticultural and agricultural purposes / By the late J.C. Louden. With a memoir of the author [by Mrs. Loudon]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    of his having all the seeds. While yet quite a child, he was sent to live with an uncle in Edinburgh, that he might attend the classes at the public schools. Here he over¬ came his dislike to Latin, and made extraordinary progress in drawing and arithmetic. He also attended classes of botany and chemistry, making copious notes, illustrated Avith very clever pen-and-ink sketches. Still he could not make up his mind to learn French, till one day, when he was about fourteen, his uncle, showing a fine French engraving to a friend, asked his nephew to translate the title. This he could not do; and the deep shame and mor~ tification which he felt, and which he never afterwards forgot, made him determine to acquire the language. Pride, however, and a love of independence, which was ever one of his strongest feelings, prevented him from applying to his father to defray the expense; and he actually paid his master himself, by the sale of a translation which he afterwards made for the editor of a periodical then pub¬ lishing in Edinburgh. He subsequently studied Italian, and paid his master in the same manner. He also kept a Journal from the time he was thirteen, and continued it for nearly thirty years; writing it for many years in French, in order to familiarise himself with the language. Among all the studies which Mr. Loudon pursued while in Edinburgh, those he preferred were writing and drawing. The first he learned from Mr. Paton, afterwards father to the celebrated singer of that name; and strange enough, I have found an old letter of his to Mr. Lou¬ don, sen., prophesying that his son John would be one of the best writers of his day — a prophecy that has been abundantly realised, thougF certainly not in the sense its author intended it. Drawing was, however, his favourite pursuit; and in this he made such proficiency, that, when his father at last consented to his being brought up as a landscape-gardener, he was competent to take the situation of draughtsman and assistant to Mr. John Mawer, at Easter Dairy, near Edinburgh. Mr. Mawer was a nurseryman, as well as a planner (as the Scotch