[John Mills, author and agriculturalist.] Autograph Letter Signed to his bookseller John Nourse, describing French books he wishes him to procure, one ‘on account of some matters relative to Agriculture, which I have in my head’.

The recipient is not named, but can be identified as the Strand bookseller John Nourse, from Notes and Queries, 3 September 1881, which has as its first article a transcription, with commentary of five long letters from Mills to John Nourse, the noted scientific bookseller in the Strand, and the present item clearly belongs to the same correspondence, predating the first, which is dated 15 May 1765. Among the editorial matter is the following: ‘The correspondence gives one a notion that Nourse, bookseller to his Majesty, had buoyed up the author’s hopes without sufficient reflection on the risk of publishing afresh upon a heavy subject in a field then recently occupied by the appearance, in 1764, of Adam Anderson’s Deduction of the Origin of Commerce from the Earliest Accounts.’ (In fact Mills’s ‘New System of Practical Husbandry’ was published in five volumes in 1767 by Johnson and Davenport.) See the two men’s entries in the Oxford DNB. Both Mills and Nourse were associated with Benjamin Franklin. 1p, 8vo. Seventeen lines of text, neatly and closely written, signed 'John Mills'. In fair condition, lightly aged and worn, with closed tear at edge of central vertical fold. Begins: ‘Sir/ When you write to Paris for the few books of which I gave you a Memorandum this afternoon, you will oblige me much in desiring that / Le Calendrier des Laboureurs, par M. Plumier, and / Memoires et Avantures de Dom Inigo de Pascarilla, sold by Duchesne, Musier et Pancoucke, / may be sent to you by the first conveyance.’ After a brief mention of the publication details of the former work he continues: ‘I mean these for my own account; wanting much to see the former on account of some matters relative to Agriculture, which I have in my head; & the latter, merely to satisfy my curiosity which the Journal Encyclopedique has raised in me.’ In a postscript he names ‘likewise another book which I beg you to procure for my account’.