50 JOHN GOODYER 



In the autumn he paid his customary visit to Coys/ 

 who on 29 September was able to show him ' Scabiosa 

 flore rubro' in flower (cf. 8 October 1621). 



During the winter months he was evidently occupied 

 with a literary labour that will be referred to in the 

 following year when it was finished. 



In February a stray note on the Curled Parsley (Apium 

 crispum) growing at Idsworth suggests an excursion down 

 the steep wooded hills beyond the South Downs in the 

 midst of very beautiful country, then part of the Forest 

 of Bere. And in March he received seeds of twenty-two 

 garden plants from Coys, including two kinds of ' aples of 

 love' or tomatoes, p. 325. 



1623 



His botanical descriptions now cease for a while. We 

 have only one note, on a species of Acorus dated July 

 1623. It may be that he was unable to pursue his hobby 

 with the same activity as heretofore : perhaps he had to 

 leave Droxford — for we find no mention of his garden 

 there after this date. But the advancement of botanical 

 learning still remained the prevailing occupation of his 

 leisure, only from henceforth we find it taking another form, 

 a desire to make the plant lore of antiquity available for 

 English readers, and to this he devoted the winter months. 



By this time he had collected a considerable number of 

 botanical works both of his contemporaries and of the 

 great Masters of the past. A beautifully bound copy in 

 Italian binding of the Aldine folio edition of Theophrastus 

 (1497) was among them. The margins of this book he 

 inscribed with the numbers of the chapters, and translated 

 the whol-e into English. The ten books De Planlh fill 

 238 pages of his neat small script, and the six books De 

 CaiLsis Plantartnn take 256 more. We do not know when 



^ This is proved by a marginal note on p. 130 of his copy of Parkinson's 

 Tlicatrum. There he renames Parkinson's No. 8, Aster Virgineus, as ' Helian- 

 themum radice repente Virginianuni. Mr. William Coys of Slubbers in Essex 

 was wont to call it so. 26 Sept. 1622 I sawc it in his garden. John (loodyer'. 



