Reynolds, Gilbert Westacott; foreword by J C Smuts The Aloes of South Africa (1950) This is a very

This is a very good copy of the first standard edition without dustjacket, and is priced accordingly.

Dedicated [by the amateur botanist and optician author] to Dr N R Smuts and Dr R A Dyer "and to all, who, with a true regard for South African Flora, seek [the aloe's] protection in nature".

The preface is unusually detailed and informative, and Smuts's late-1949 foreword - one of his last - showed that the Field Marshal and Prime Minister was himself an amateur botanist of note (with at least one grass species named after him).

Green cloth-boards, gilt to upper panel and spine, green-tinted top page-edge, yellow-and green head and tail bands, printed green endpapers, xxiv + 520 pp of b/w text and index, with 572 b/w figures in the text, + 76 inserted full-page single-sided colour photographs - all on gloss-art paper.

CONDITION. Light shelf wear, lightly rubbed spine-ends, lightly sunned spine. Tightly bound, endpapers clean, no binding cracks. Front free endpaper verso and half-title lightly foxed, also the same 2 pp at the back, with ownership details in pencil opposite the half-title. For the rest, the copy, including its wealth of colour plates, is complete and undamaged, unmarked and undiscoloured - everything better than Very Good.