Italo Giglioli - Malessere agrario ed alimentare in Italia. Relazione di un giurato italiano all'Esposizione - 1903

Fine 798-page volume, elegantly bound.

Portici, Premiato Stabilimento Tipografico Vesuviano di E. Della Torre, 1903. Quarto, pp. LXXXII (General Index and Proem), 798, amateur binding in elegant, sturdy red leather with gilt titles, marbled boards, private ownership signature on title page. Italo Giglioli (Genoa, 1852 – Pisa, 1920) was an Italian chemist. He served as a juror at the 1900 Paris Exposition, where he delivered a report highlighting, with figures to back it up, the delays and shortcomings in the organization of higher agricultural education in Italy compared with other European nations, foremost among them Germany. In these years Giglioli had been pursuing his interests in economics and sociology; building on these premises and on the international comparisons made possible by the Paris event, he produced this wide-ranging work, in which he explored the field of agricultural economics, comparing not only the different European realities but also considering the state of agricultural sciences in the United States, China, and Japan. With this substantial volume, the Author sought to demonstrate Italy’s agricultural and food-related malaise, and thus the gap between it and the most important and comparable nations. A great many sectors are considered: in addition to traditional questions concerning grain, market gardening, viticulture, fruit growing, and floriculture; and in addition to discussing olive growing, mushrooms and truffles, beekeeping, and artificial refrigeration; the work addresses more specific and particular subjects such as saffron cultivation and industry, the camphor tree in Italy and its industrial importance, the need to increase the number of gardens and acclimatization experiments in Italy, the “celebration” and “penance” of trees, woods, forests, climate, the paper industry, oyster farming, mollusks, the development of Italy’s sea coasts, shipping and commercial fleets compared with those of other countries, freshwater fish and the output of Italian lakes, here compared with those of Germany, the need to increase the productivity of the Po, and aquaculture and fish-farming stations, in light of Japan’s intensive policies. And many other subjects: the index is very long and highly detailed. An important and uncommon volume. A few scattered spots of foxing, but a copy in a handsome, elegant binding, well preserved.