396 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



for tlie collector. Years later, Sir Henry Wotton could say, " I 

 know all the plants of my time, and have scarcely simpled farther 

 than Cheapside," In Gerarde's day Avild flowers grew all over Lon- 

 don; the water violet was found at Lambeth; " a field at Southwark, 

 back of the theatre," the Globe Theatre, was all abloom; wall rue 

 grew on Westminster Abbey, and wall pennyivort over " the 

 door that leadeth from Chaucer's tomb to the old Palace," while 

 bugloss mantled " the drie ditch banks in Pickedille." In " An 

 Address to the well Affected Reader and Peruser of this Booke," he 

 says, " Myselfe, one of the least among many, have presumed to 

 set forth vnto the view of the world, the first fruits of my owne 

 Labours." But he was meanwhile '' constrained to seeke after his 

 living, being void of friends to beare some parte of the burden." 

 He further notes the difliculties which beset an honest searcher after 

 truth, saying, " Let a man excell neuer so much in any excellent 

 knowledge, neuer the les many times he is not so much regarded as a 

 lester, a Booster, a Quacksaluer, or Mountebank." 



Gerarde was born at ISTamptwich in Cheshire, in the year 1545. 

 Thence he came early to London, and both as gardener in the lordly 

 domains of Cecil and as an apothecary, he made wise use of the 

 knowledge gained as " a paineful Llerbarist " and " a curious searcher 

 of simples." He studied surgery, and practiced to some extent in 

 the empirical methods of the time, but his heart was centered in his 

 garden at Holborn. There was his seminary, or " seed plot and nurs- 

 ery for young plants," as the word is defined in Bailey's Dictionary. 

 There he collected the English flora, and established many foreign 

 plants, studying their habits, their possible uses, and their adaptation 

 to the climate of England. His diligence in searching out new 

 species was unwearied. Drayton alludes to his work as the limit of 

 possible accomplishment : 



" To those unnumbered sorts of simples here that grew, 

 Which justly to set down even Dodon short doth fall, 

 Nor skillful Gerard yet shall ever find them all." 



Botanists of to-day say that Gerarde knew little of science, but 

 it is worth while to consider what science was in the sixteenth cen- 

 tury, when the glamour of alchemy and of astrology diffused a false 

 light over every department of natural philosophy. Gerarde died 

 in 1607, just one hundred years before Linnasus was born, and a 

 dozen years before the birth of John Ray, who laid the corner stone 

 of the natural system and made the first formal catalogue of British 

 plants. Eor a man then to have studied in any spirit of careful 

 observation means much. His belittlers emphasize Gerarde's igno- 

 rance of the classic Avriters on botany. He might be none the worse 

 for that, but he quotes with discrimination from Theophrastus and 



