70 JOHN GOODYER 



name of the plant in Latine in a line by it selfe, and at the end 

 his name is inserted ; so that the Reader may easily finde those 

 things that I had from him, and I hope together with me will be 

 thankfull to him, that he would so readily impart them for the 

 further increase of this knowledge.' 



Dr. Reynolds Green has estimated that the new book 

 contained about 2,850 descriptions of plants, so far the 

 largest number included in any herbal. This made the 

 work the most important and influential of its time, but 

 we cannot agree with Dr. Green in attributing the name 

 by which it is widely quoted, * Gerard Emaculatus ', to Ray, 

 for How in 1650, and John Goodyer still earlier, had already 

 made a practice of referring to it by that name. Nor can 

 we agree that Johnson was the first to depart from the 

 practice of the older botanists in relying on their gardens 

 for the plants they described. Goodyer had long paid 

 special attention to wild plants. 



Green remarks, as have some others, on the ' rapidity 

 with which Johnson worked' and that 'he had but little 

 assistance '. But this is a wrong view. He had the 

 assistance of the best English botanist of the day. 



The work of the two men was essentially on different 

 lines. Johnson was an M.D., he had translated the surgical 

 works of Ambrose Parey ; he discussed the medicinal pro- 

 perties or verities of plants with greater gusto than he 

 displayed for their morphology. Goodyer was a scientific 

 botanist, ' second to none in his Industrie and searching of 

 plants, nor in his judgement or knowledge of them '. 



Johnson freely availed himself of the archaeological 

 knowledge of Goodyer, as in the case of the figure that was 

 supposed to be the oldest drawing of Saxifraga, taken from 

 an illustrated manuscript of Apuleius Platonicus. 



In the case of the confusion between Solidago sarra- 

 cenica and Arabis quorundam, Johnson notes 'My very 

 good friend Mr. lohn Goodyer was the first, I thinke, 

 that observed this mistake in our Author; for which his 

 observation, together with some others formerly and here- 

 after to be remembered, I acknowledge myself beholden 



