The German proto-neoclassicals were doing it that way as early as 1841, and Marshall drew off of them, although without attribution. Also, in the English language tradition Fleeming Jenkin did it before him. My understanding is that Marshall was very much focused on explaining the market for bread, the most important commodity in the average person's consumption basked in England even still in the late 1800s. For that market, quantity as driven by weather, is the more exogenous factor, with price responding. It was the French, starting with Cournot and continuing with Walras, who put price on the horizontal axis. With the relative decline of agriculture our discussions have looked more like the Walrasian one with price exogenous to quantity rather than in the German/Marshallian perspective. Barkley Rosser