DESCRIPTIONS OF PLANTS 45 



at work ' in gathering up into a catalogue all such plants 

 as I had found at any time growing wild in England, 

 not in order to the present publishing of them, but for 

 my own use, possibly one day they may see the light'. 



It must be remembered that at this period there was 

 no English botany book worthy of the name in existence. 

 The standard works used in this country were the Herbal 

 of Dr. William Turner, printed in 1568 at Cologne, and 

 illustrated, not with drawings of British plants, but with 

 reduced copies of some 400 figures drawn from continental 

 plants and previously used at Basel to illustrate the 1545 

 edition of Fuchs' great work. That Fuchs' original draw- 

 ings were of considerable beauty, and that nothing to equal 

 them could have been engraved in England, is admitted ; 

 but as illustrations to an English Floi-a they were 

 misleading. 



In 1574 a further impetus was given to the study of 

 English botany by the publication of Henry Lyte's edition 

 of Dodoens' Herbal, which, as the preface shows, has con- 

 siderable claims to originality rather than to being a mere 

 translation, but for this again the small, inferior copies of 

 Fuchs' figures were requisitioned. 



The next and best known of English Herbals, that of 

 Gerard, appeared in 1597, but again it was a compilation 

 from foreign works, so imperfectly ' accomodated unto our 

 English nation' that Lobel was requested by the printer to 

 correct the blunders, and still Goodyer was able to discover 

 many others. 



Consequently, like many other botanists, Goodyer must 

 have been eternally plagued with the attempt to make 

 English plants fit the descriptions and figures of continental 

 writers — a labour that has been aptly compared with the 

 endeavour to fit square pegs in round holes. He was, 

 however, sufficiently gifted to perceive the futility of the 

 attempt, and to recognize at an early period the need for 

 accurate descriptions made from the living, flowering plant 

 beside him. 



