316 NOTICES OP BOOKS. 



sarily spread out with useless references and repetitions, and contains 

 numerous misprints. H. T. 



A Catalogue of Plants cultivated in the Garden of John Gerard, in the 

 years 1596-1599. Edited, with Notes, References to " Gerard's 

 Herball," the addition of Modern Names, and a Life of the Author, 

 by Benjamix Daydon Jackson, F.L.S. Privately printed. 

 London. 1876. (4to., pp. 64.) 



A EEPKiNT of so scarce a little tract as the first edition of Gerard's 

 garden catalogue, of which the copy in the British Museum is the 

 only one known to the author, is very acceptable. Its title is 

 " Catalogus arborum, fruticum ac plantarum tarn indigenarura, (]uam 

 cxoticarum in horto Johannis Gerardi, civis et chirurgi Londiuensis 

 nascentium," and the date 1596. Though carelessly prepared and 

 very badly printed, it possesses a special interest as the earliest com- 

 plete list of the plants cultivated in an English garden, or indeed in 

 any garden known. It is dedicated to Lord Burleigh, of whoso 

 gardens in the Strand and at Theobalds in Hertfordshire at the time 

 Gerard was superintendent. The precise site of his own " hortulus 

 suburbanus " cannot now be fixed with certainty, but was probably in 

 Holborn, where he had a house ; but, as Mr. Jackson points out, the 

 northern side of the road was at that time a garden of forty acres 

 belonging to the Bishopric of Ely. 



The reprint of this catalogue aims to be an exact copy, but docs 

 not attempt an actual facsimile. The names, which are in Latin, arc 

 arranged alphabetically and printed in two columns, and are about 

 1027 in number. In the following year, 1597, Gerard published the 

 book by which he is well known, his " Herball," which, as improved 

 by Johnson, was for so long the standard botanical work in this 

 country ; and two years after, in 1599, the second edition of the " Cata- 

 logus" of his garden appeared. Of this several copies are known. It 

 is a small folio of twenty-six pages, with a dedication to Sir AValter 

 Baleigh, and contains many more plants than the previous one, 

 arranged alphabetically in two columns by their Latin names, to 

 which, however, the English ones are added. 



It is in the reprint of this that Mr. Jackson has embodied his own 

 researches, with the result of giving us a very interesting volume. 

 His object was primarily to determine Gerard's plants, a matter often 

 of considerable difficulty. " The vagueness noticeable in Gerard's 

 works has proved a constant source of annoyance and possible error in 



the task of determination It has frequently been necessary, 



from the total incompatibility of the English and Latin names, to 

 judge by probabilities which denomination to follow." Without the 

 aid of the old collections embodied in the Sloancan herbarium several 

 could never have been made' out ; as the editor remarks, " the posses- 

 sion of these contributes to render the British Museum unrivalled for 

 such researches." He has added to each species in the list a reference 

 to the "Herball" of 1597, and then appended in thick type the 

 modern scientific name. Occasionally extracts from the "Herball" 

 and other books bearing on the subject are given, and, in fact, we have 

 here all the information on the plants of this early garden that can be 



