8vo. xvii, [1], 398pp. With a half-title and eleven engraved folding plates. Uncut and largely unopened in contemporary gilt-ruled half-calf, marbled boards, contrasting red morocco lettering-piece. Rubbed, upper joint starting. Armorial bookplate of Sylvester Lord Glenbervie to FEP.

A crisp copy of the first edition of Church of England clergyman Samuel Horsley's (1733-1806) primer on the fundamental principles of mathematics in three parts, 'Arithmetic of Fractions', 'Trigonometry, plane and Spherical', and 'Projections of the Sphere'. The tracts were first composed 'without any design for publication, for the use of a young Gentleman, a Student of Christ-Church' and afterwards 'given to the University of Oxford.' Horsley additional notes that 'this volume is to be considered also, though first published, as the Third and last in the order of the subject, of Three Volumes of Elementary Geometry, to be issued one after another, with all convenient speed, from the University Press'.

Sylvester Douglas, first Baron Glenbervie (1743-1823), British politician and lawyer, sometime Chief Secretary for Ireland (1793-1794).