ENGLISH HEBBALS. 67 



my Mother Nature, by whose advice, together with the help of Dr. Dili- 

 gence, I at last obtained my desire, and being warned by Mr. Honesty, 

 a stranger in our days, to publish it to the World, I have done it." 

 Culpeper seems to have been absolutely saturated with his astrological 

 notions; he tells us that 'seed sowed at the wane of the Moon, grows 

 either not at all, or to no purpose ' ! 



Keturning to the earliest herbals, we find that the idea of natural 

 relationship between plants, or even of the necessity of any sort of 

 classification, is scarcely existent. The anonymous Herbal of 1525, 

 and the 'Grete Herball' are both arranged alphabetically. But the 

 'Grete Herball' contains the germ of a classification of the fungi — 

 a classification of the most charming simplicity ! ' ' Fungi ben mus- 

 sherons. There be two maners of them, one maner is deadly and 

 sleeth them that eateth of them, and be called todestoles, and the other 

 dooth not." Exactly fifty years after the publication of the 'Grete 

 Herball,' Lobel's 'Herbal' appeared, and from it we gather that dur- 

 ing this half century the idea of natural affinity had been in a sort 

 of dim instinctive fashion getting hold of men's minds. He describes 

 in succession rushes, grasses, bulbous plants, orchidaceous plants, cruci- 

 fers, composite plants, etc. The arrangements adopted by Dodoens and 

 later by Gerarde are similar to that of Lobel, but slightly more natural. 

 Parkinson in 1640 gives a more elaborate classification, and though it 

 seems very primitive when judged by the standard of the present day, 

 especially as regards the stress laid on the 'virtues' of the plants, yet 

 it shows that great progress had been made since the publication of 

 the earliest herbals. He divides all plants into seventeen classes, some 

 of which are quite satisfactory, while others, such as No. 14, which 

 includes 'Marsh, Water and Sea Plants, and Mosses and Mushrooms,' 

 are a trifle too comprehensive ! There is something charmingly naive 

 about the titles of his fifteenth and seventeenth classes. These are 

 'The Unordered Tribe' and 'Strange and Outlandish Plants.' 



Early in the next century Linnaeus was born. A vast mass of in- 

 formation had been accumulating for two hundred years, and it needed 

 a luminous intellect like his to reduce it to order. As the fruit of his 

 labor we have his marvelous 'System,' in which he followed a much 

 earlier writer, the Italian botanist, Cesalpinus, in attributing the 

 chief importance to the organs of fructification. The day of the 

 herbal proper may be said to have closed with Linnaeus and thencefor- 

 ward botany proceeded on more strictly scientific lines. The subject 

 sprang into fashion in his time in the most astonishing way, probably 

 owing to the easy method which his ' System ' offered of tracking down 

 and identifying plants — from the chosen pursuit of a few enthusiasts 

 it became the heritage of the many — it was dubbed the 'loveliest of 

 the sciences,' and 'recommended especially to ladies, as a harmless 

 pastime, not overtaxing to the mind.' 



