JAMESON, James.
Manuscript exercise book on mensuration and surveying.
Perth, 1780s?
8vo, manuscript on laid paper, pp. 54, [2], 75, [1], 37, [1], with an additional folding drawing of ‘Part of the South Inch of Perth’, and with hand-coloured diagrams throughout; in very good condition, bound in contemporary tree calf, gilt roll tool border to covers, sometime rebacked in sheep; upper board detached, losses to spine, wear to corners; purchase note and booklabel of Robin de Beaumont.
A particularly attractive manuscript schoolbook from Perth Academy (founded 1696).
The text is divided into three separately paginated sections covering ‘Mensuration of Heights and Distances’, with thirty attractive illustrations, mostly within roundels; ‘Mensuration of Surfaces’, with a number of geometry diagrams in black and white; and ‘Land Surveying’, with seven diagrams and the inserted plan of Perth, most hand-coloured. The first section is apparently written from direct experience: ‘From the top of a Tower whose height was 140 feet I took the angles of depression of a tree and a house ... At sea I observed two headlands’.
The compiler is likely the James Jameson (1773−1834) born at Dysart who was educated at Perth Academy before a maritime career in the East India Company; he was the son of John Jameson (b. 1741) lawyer and town clerk of Dysart, who was also factor to a local landowner.
Provenance: from the library of the collector, dealer and curator Robin de Beaumont, whose purchase note reports it as the best of a group of schoolbooks from Perth Academy bought by him from Mrs Yates of Stirling in the 1950s.
