92 



TURNER S NAMES OF HERBES. 



We can but express a lioxDe that the work, of which a specimen 

 is here afforded, may ere long be taken up and carried to a suc- 

 cessful issue by some competeint botanist. J. B. 



The Names of Herhes. By William TuRxNer, A.D. 1548. Edited 

 (with Introduction, Index of English Names, and Identifica- 

 tion of Plants) by James Britten, F.L.S. Triibner & Co., 

 for the English Dialect Society. 1881 [1882.] 



The works of William Turner are valuable to the botanical 

 student, and especially to the student of English Botany, but they 

 have also an interest to the student of English plant-names and to 

 the student of the English language of the sixteenth century. He 

 had travelled much in Europe, and had seen a great part of 

 England, except the western counties, and wherever he lived or 

 went he was a keen observer of the native plants, and carefully 

 recorded their native names, and at the same time he took note 

 of all the exotics that were introduced into gardens in his day. 

 The present book is very full of such notices. It was his second 

 botanical work, coming after his ' Libellus,' and before his ' Herbal.' 

 The especial object of the book was to take "the names of the 

 moste parte of lierbes, that all auncient authours write of both in 

 Greke, Lattin, Englishe, Duclie, and Frenche," and then to give 

 their modern equivalents, with a short notice of their native 

 countries and medical uses. He is always careful to notice whether 

 they are found in England or not, and so by his help we get some 

 curious and unexpected histories of our English Flora and intro- 

 duced plants. He had never seen Lilies of the Valley — "it 

 groweth plentuously in Germany, but not in England that ever 

 I coulde see, savynge in my Lordes gardine at Syon ;" he "never 

 saw any plaine tree in Englande saving once in Northumberlande 

 besyde Morpeth, and an other at Barnwel Abbey besyde Cambryge." 

 The Pomegranate was grown at Syon, but even in all his European 

 travels he "never saw any perfit date tree yet, but onely a litle 

 one that never came to perfection." Carrots in his day were " in 

 plentie," but French beane or " faselles " were apparently not 

 grown in England, but " grow in great pletieiu Italy about Pavia." 

 The long radish in his day " groweth communely in Englande," 

 but not the turnip radish; that he had only seen "in high 

 Almany': and the raspberry, called "in englishe raspeses or 

 hyndberies," as apparently far from common, as he only records 

 it " in certayiie gardiues of Englande." 



To the student of old English the book will have a great 

 interest, and he will be thankful for its republication by the 

 English Dialect Society, and that it has found so able and careful 

 an editor as Mr. Britten. Wherever the plant had an established 

 English name, Turner recorded it; and where there was no fixed 

 name, he invented one, and these invented names were often so 

 happily chosen that many survive to our own day. 



Mr. Britten has added two valuable aj)pendices ; the first of 

 which gives all Turner's English names " arranged in alphabetical 



