Bidspirit auction | Sá, José Maria de —

Sá, José Maria de — O COQUEIRO. PARTE PRIMEIRA. HISTORIA NATURAL E CULTURA. Nova Goa. Typographia Fontainhas. 1898. x, 91 pp. 22.5 cm × 16.0 cm. E. - Rare work, published with the support of the Provincial Commission for the Centenary of India (1498–1898), which examines in detail the origin, varieties, and geographical distribution of the coconut palm, as well as its cultivation, fertilisation, and production processes. Like almost all publications from Portuguese India, this is of extreme rarity. The copy at auction bears an oleographic stamp of the Companhia do Boror on the flyleaf, a colonial company founded in 1899 in Zambézia which became, at its height, the largest coconut palm enterprise in Mozambique in the twentieth century, with over two million coconut palms planted. All evidence suggests that this work served as a technical guide for the Company's plantations. Illustrated hors-texte with a photograph of a coconut palm plantation in India and with statistical tables showing the number of coconut palms and the area they occupied in Goa in the year 1879. Contemporary binding with a leather spine and gilt tooling.