Xili 
In this year, 1596, our Author made his first appearance in print; being urged by many friends 
he issued a list of the plants he had cultivated in his own garden, for some years ;* this catalogue 
will be found described in the introduction. So far as I can learn, this little work of twenty-four ; 
pages is the first professedly complete catalogue of any one garden, either public or private, ever 
published. There are two previous works indeed of somewhat similar purpose, but as will be seen, 
they really occupy different ground. In the one case Conrad Gesner drew up a codified list of 
choice plants, cultivated in the gardens of about twenty of his friends,” and short lists follow, of 
rarities in certain gardens; in the other, Johann Franke, published his Hortus Lusatiz, an 
extremely scarce work, in 48 pages, which contains a catalogue of all plants growing near Launitz 
in Bohemia, both wild or cultivated, the latter being distinguished by the addition of the letter H. 
The year following, Gerard was attacked by a “ most greeuous ague and of long continuance” ;* 
subsequently, he was appointed Junior Warden of the Barber-Surgeons,” and in December, the 
work by which his name has been preserved, appeared at his own risk (?),” under the title of ‘ The 
Herball, or general historie of Plants,” etc. The history of this work is curious, and well deserv- 
ing of attention. 
John Norton, the Queen’s printer, had commissioned a Dr. Priest, a member of the College of 
Physicians,* to translate Dodoen’s Pemptades (1583) from the Latin into English,* but the trans- 
lator dying before the completion of his task,” the unfinished work came by some means, into the 
hands of Gerard.” To mask the fact of his Herball being little else than a mere translation, he ¥ 
altered the arrangement from that of Dodoens into that of L’Obel, and flippantly remarking that he 
had heard of Dr. Priest’s labours, but the man being dead, his work had perished with him,” he had 
the effrontery to declare that his own researches had produced the work, to which that statement 
was prefixed. The wood blocks used by Tabernzemontanus in his Eicones (1590), (not the Neuw 
Kreuterbuch, 1588), with some others, were procured from Frankfort by Norton,” but Gerard soon 
showed his slender knowledge,® by misapplying many of the figures, and caused so much con- 
fusion in the early chapters of the Herball, that the attention of the printer was directed to it by 
James Garret,a London Apothecary, and the correspondent of Charles de l’Escluse. L’Obel was there- 
upon invited to correct the work, and by his own account he actually corrected it in a thousand 
places, but further emendation was stopped by the author, who contended that the Herball was 
already sufficiently accurate, and that his censor had forgotten the English language.* Iam 
disposed to credit this assertion, after careful comparison of the names used by Gerard, in both 
editions of his Catalogus, with those in his Herball, and although L’Obel addressed Gerard in very 
complimentary terms,” yet afterwards he used needlessly bitter language in speaking of his old 
acquaintance, * charging him with pilfering from the Adversaria without acknowledgement,* and 
giving inappropriate names to plants.* , 
The Herball contains upwards of eighteen hundred woodcuts, of which not more than sixteen 
appear to be original,® although Sprengel gives a list of twenty-five, either original or peculiar, 
some being no improvement upon the old figures ;” yet Gerard ventured to excuse certain 
irregularities in his third book, owing to his being “ hindered by the slacknesse of the cutters or 
38 Ger. Cat. ed. I. dedic. 9 V. Cordi, Annot. in Dios. foll. 236—288. 2 Ger. 1006. 
21 List at Barbers’ Hall. 22 Ger. pref. 73 Lob. Ill. 3. 24 Ger. pref. 75 Lob. Rond. 59. 
7 Johns., in Ger.em., pref. 27 Bredwell, lit. in Ger. * Ger. pref. 9 Johns., in Ger. em., pref. 3° Lob, Ill. 2. 
3* Lob. Il. 3. 32 Ger, pref., & 55. 33 Cf. Lob. Ill. 34. 63. 95, 11. # Ib. g5. 3s Ib, x13, 
36 Haller, Bibl, Bot, i, 389. 37 Spreng. Hist. i, 466. 
