OXFORD 49 



own county, with William Yalden the College Clerk of the 

 Account, his brother-in-law, and in addition his scientific 

 interests may rather make us wonder that he should not 

 have visited Oxford more frequently. It was but the 

 year before, that Magdalen had granted to the University 

 five acres of land, then in process of being laid out as a 

 Botanic Garden, and Goodyer may have contributed some 

 of the first plants. Among the then fellows of the College 

 was Walter Stonehouse whose garden-lists subsequently 

 came into Goodyer s possession, and among the new Demies 

 was Sampson Johnson, the friend of Thomas Johnson and 

 an early authority on the purgative action of various kinds 

 of rhubarb.^ 



In May Goodyer completed his notes on the flowers and 

 galls of the oak, and on the cachryes ^ of the walnut, 

 chestnut, alder, and birch. Oak-galls had long had a 

 peculiar interest, because a gardener by ' looking whether 

 there be in them eyther Flyes, Wormes, or Spiders ' could 

 presage battle, dearth, and scarcity or plague.^ 



On 2 July 'in the high waie neare Abington leadinge 

 towards Oxford ' he saw the fine Woolly Thistle {Cnictis 

 eriopJwriis) , which he had already found by a Hampshire 

 roadside in 1617 (f. 107). On the 5th while exploring 'by 

 the Rivers side and in the water diches about Oxford ' he 

 saw the Great Water Parsnip {Shim latifolmm L.) before 

 the flowers were fully formed, and continuing his walk on 

 the west part of Gloster Hall, now Worcester College, 

 he there noted for the first time the Wood Club Rush 

 (Scirpus sylvaticus L.) (f. 7 v.). 



^ Thomas Johnson wrote ' My friend Mr. Sampson Johnson, Fellow of Magdalen 

 College in Oxford, assures me, that the Physitions of Vienna in Austria use 

 scarce any other [medicine] at this day than the Rubarb of the Antients which 

 grows in Hungary not far from thence : and they prefer it before the dried 

 Rubarb brought out of Persia and the East Indies, because it hath not so strong 

 a binding facultie as it, neither doth it heate so much ; onely it must be used 

 in somewhat a larger quantitie' {Ger. emac. 396). S. Johnson had no 

 doubt opportunity of testing this statement during his year's leave of absence 

 from College, beginning on 14 March 1630-1. 



" See p. 174. ' Thomas Hill, The profitable Arte of Gardening, 1574. 



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