An Appeal for the Horse.

This is a rare or used book from the Berkelouw Rare Books Department.

Adelaide: David Gall 1866. Sm. 8vo. Orig. purple cloth with gilt title to front cover. (iv 52pp.). With 6 tinted full-page lithographs by the author. Fine crisp copy. Ferguson 10181. Rare. NOTE: First edition of this most attractive book an account of the habits of the horse in Australia by the pioneer overlander and noted bush artist. Hamilton who had arrived in Sydney as a midshipman worked his way east by droving a herd of sheep from Port Philip to Adelaide. He settled in South Australia in 1839 where he was an active participant in the local horse races and a very keen artist exhibiting in Adelaide's first two art exhibitions. In 1864 the Adelaide Advertiser praised his accurate renderings and said his drawings of horses "have no equals in the colony". Five of his drawings were engraved for Eyre's Journals of Discovery into Central Australia and along with his contemporary S.T. Gill his drawings were used to illustrate the published journals of Grey. He owned his own lithographic press and made prints from his drawings which made him according to Robert Holden probably the first print-maker in South Australia. In 1848 Hamilton was appointed second clerk in the Colonial Treasury and subsequently entered the police force serving as Commissioner of Police from 1867 to 1882.