130 Transactions of the Society. 



the Restoration, when they were incorporated by charter as the Royal 

 Society of London for the Promotion of Natural Knowledge. 



The vegetable kingdom had been up to this time studied chiefly 

 because of the real or imaginary virtues which the plants were be- 

 lieved to possess. The first English botanical work was published in 

 1516. It was little more than a translation of the ' Hortus Sanitatis/' 

 and was illustrated with many rude woodcuts copied on a smaller 

 scale from the illustrations of the earlier work. This volume had the 

 title: — 'The Grete Herball, whiche giveth knowledge and under- 

 standing of all manner of Herbes and there gracyous virtues,' o/c. 



William Turner, the father of English botany, was a native of 

 Morpeth. He was in 1538 a student of Pembroke Hall, Cambridge. 

 He had already acquired a love of plants, but he got little help in 

 Cambridge. He says, " I could learn never one Greek, neither Latin, 

 nor English name, even amongst the physicians, of any herb or tree ; 

 such was the ignorance at that time ; and as yet there was no English 

 Herbal, but one all full of unlearned cacographies and false naming 

 of herbs." This, no doubt, refers to ' The Grete Herball.' At the 

 University he adopted decided Puritan opinions, and these being 

 obnoxious to Bishop Gardiner, he was put in prison. On being 

 liberated he went to the Continent, where in many places he visited 

 he found opportunities for studying botany. He graduated M.D. at 

 Ferrara. He lived for some time at Cologne, and there published the 

 first part of his great Herbal in 1551. It was completed in 1568. 



Thereafter followed three famous and still well-known Herbals. 

 John Gerard was an apothecary, living in Holboru, and having a 

 Botanical Garden there. His ' Herball or Generall Historie of 

 Plantes' was published in 1597. Thomas Johnson, also an apothe- 

 cary, whose shop was in Snow Hill, issued in 1633 a new and greatly 

 improved edition of Gerard's ' Herball.' He was an ardent Royalist, 

 and joined the king's army at Oxford, with the rank of lieutenant- 

 colonel. He gained for himself, on this account, from the Royalist 

 University, the degree of M.D. in 1643, but on the 14th September 

 of the following year he was fatally wounded in an encounter with 

 the enemy, and died a fortnight thereafter. He was an exact and 

 learned botanist. John Parkinson, like his predecessors, was a 

 London apothecary. His first work was specially devoted to horti- 

 culture ; this I mention because of its title — ' Paradisi-in-Sole Para- 

 disus terrestris,' a play on his name Park-in-son. His ' Theatrum 

 Botanicum, the Theater of Plants, or a Herball of a large extent,' 

 was published in 1640. It is a more learned and able Herbal than 

 those that preceded it. 



The first British Flora was published by Dr. William How in 

 1650, under the title 'Phytologia Britannica.' How joined the 

 Royalist army, but on the failure of the king's cause he settled in 

 Milk Street, London, and practised medicine, but survived the 

 publication of his Flora only six years. 



