176 HISTORY OF ESSEX BOTANY. 



plants." He is also frequently mentioned in Parkinson's 

 Theatrum. Ashmole in his Diary for October gth, 1651, writes 

 " My Father Backhouse and I went to see Mr. Goodier, the 

 great Botanist, at Petersfield." Robert Brown justly honoured 

 Goodyer by naming after him the orchidaceous genus Goodyera. 

 The next work to Johnson's Hevhall which contains any 

 important Essex records is the Theatrum Botanicum of John 

 Parkinson, published in 1640. Of Parkinson there is a some- 

 what full account in Pulteney,"** to which a few points are added 

 in the Flora of Middlesex fp. 372) and by the late Mr. G. W. 

 Johnson in the Journal of Horticulture for 1875.'''* He was 

 born apparently in Nottinghamshire, in 1567, and practised as 

 an apothecary in London, having a garden in Long Acre at 

 least as early as 1616 and becoming apothecary to James I. 

 Not till he was past sixty-two did he publish his first work 

 with its curious punning title Paradisi in Sole Paradisns Terrestris, 

 Folio, pp. 612, dedicated to Queen Henrietta Maria, with an 

 engraved portrait of himself by Switzer. This book, the title 

 of which is, "being interpreted," "Parkinson's Earthly 

 Paradise," deals with garden plants, describing nearly a 

 thousand and figuring 780 on 109 plates specially engraved in 

 England. Its quaint phraseology attracted the late Mrs. Ewing, 

 whose charming story, Mary's Meadow, has perhaps increased the 

 modern vogue for the book among collectors which it shares 

 with all old herbals. The reference on p. 359 to Convolvulus 

 purpuvens spicefolius at Dunmow, already quoted, is the only 

 Essex reference that I have found in this work. In 1640 

 Parkinson published his Theatrum Botanicum, London, folio, pp. 

 1746. This work, originally intended to be merely a supplement 

 to the Paradisns dealing with " A physical Garden of Simples," 

 grew into a most comprehensive herbal, describing nearly 3,800 

 species, as against Johnson's 2,850, with newly cut figures of 

 over 2,500, very full details as to medicinal uses, and a synonymy 

 which, while incorporating nearly the whole of Bauhin's Pinax, 

 shows also independent reference to the original authors. 

 Though published seven years after Johnson's edition of Gerard, 

 its preparation dated from an earlier time, whilst it is in many 

 respects more original than either Johnson or Gerard. At the 

 time of its publication Parkinson obtained the title of King's 

 Herbarist or Botanicus Regius Primarius. He died in London 



28 Sketches of the Progress of Botany, 1790, vol. i., pp. 13S-152. 



29 See Britten and Boulger, Biographical Index of British and Irish Bota}nsts, p. 131, 

 and notice, by tlie present writer, Dictionary of National Biography, vol. xliii. 



