GERARD E AND THE GERARD I AS, 397 



Dioscorides, from Plinj and Galen, and from his contemporaries, 

 Gesner and EucMus and Lonicerus. His classification was based on 

 Dr. Priest's translation of Dodoneus, published in 1583, but in the 

 details of arrangement he more closely followed Lobel, 



His special excellence Avas in the careful enumeration of native 

 plants, in the loving study of their properties, real or imagined, and 

 in the vivid descriptions which, with his faithful drawings of Eng- 

 lish plants, make him an authority in cases of disputed nomenclature. 

 Other cuts in the Herball are from the Kreutej'hucli of TabernEemon- 

 tanus, published at Frankfort in 1588, and used by Dodoneus, by 

 Lobel, and by Clusius. 



He delights also in the old English names of plants, and one 

 reads of goldes and of paigles, of pawnee and of floramour, as on 

 a page of Chaucer or of Spenser. Much of the best poetry of plant 

 lore is found in the unconscious charm of his writing. Through it all 

 runs the current of conscientious adherence to truth as he could best 

 discover it. His most marvelous ascriptions of " vertue " to any 

 plant, if not tested by himself, are qualified by " I have heard it re- 

 ported." He denounces all " ridiculous tales, whether of old wives 

 or some runnagate surgeons and physicke-mongers," and is slow to 

 accept mere hearsay. "With every plant he treats in a separate sec- 

 tion "The Kindes," "The Description," "The Places," "The 

 N'ames," " The Temperatures," and " The Yertues " of each. He 

 mentions those which "doe grow in my Garden" with especial 

 tenderness, and one can almost hear the sigh with which he some- 

 times confesses, " this, I have not seene." 



The American genus of the family ScropliulariacecB which 

 bears the name of Gerardia includes two groups of plants, re- 

 lated in structure, but very different in appearance. The false 

 foxgloves are stout herbs, the various species from two to five feet 

 in height. In some, the reddish stems are covered with the blue 

 bloom of raspberry briers. In others, the glaucous growth is replaced 

 by a delicate pubescence. The leaves, sinuate or pinnatifid, are 

 thick and usually a bluish green, although in Gerardia pedicularia 

 they are thin, pale green, and downy, and in the southern Gerardia 

 pedinata they are decidedly hairy. The exquisite yellow of the 

 flowers is the very tint of the butterflies, at their blooming, hovering 

 in thousands over the country roads. The corollas are more open 

 than those of the English foxglove, to which it has little resem- 

 blance, and the flaring flowers would furnish better hats than gloves 

 for the little folk in green. Indeed, this etymology of the common 

 name of the Digitalis may well be questioned. So careful a student 

 of plant lore as Hilderic Friend says " fox " is not a corruption of 

 "folk," but that the name was probably first fox-gleow— ^Zeow, 



