198 JOHN GOODYER 



there can be few, if any, such collections of botanical works of the 

 sixteenth and first half of the seventeenth centuries in this country.' 



When appointed to the charge of the library in 1919 I was 

 quite unaware of Canon Vaughan's correspondence with my pre- 

 decessor, and the transcript of the list of the Goodyer books was 

 not in the librar}-. Using the old list in the Book of Benefactors 

 as a guide, the work of bringing the scattered volumes together 

 was begun, and with it the compiling of a new catalogue of those 

 works which are still in the library. It is a matter for congratulation 

 that the collection is far more extensive than a somewhat imperfect 

 list printed in the Supplement to the Botanical Exchange Club 

 Report for 1916 would lead one to expect, and that with few 

 exceptions most of the volumes mentioned in the original list can 

 be identified. All the books in the collection have now been 

 marked with serial numbers and with the canting crest of the 

 Goodyer family. There are about 239 separate printed treatises 

 bound up into 134 volumes which in size are about equally divided 

 into folio, quartos, and octavos. Of incunabula or works printed in 

 the fifteenth century there are a few examples, chiefly from the 

 famous press of Aldus in Venice ; about a hundred of the treatises 

 belong to the sixteenth, and the rest to the first half of the 

 seventeenth century. 



The wealth and variety of the collection is clearly shown by the 

 catalogue, but the personal associations of particular volumes with 

 contemporary botanists, as well as the marginal annotations, indexes, 

 and notes, which Goodyer so freely added to the works he used, 

 give a unique value to many of the books. 



Some sixty-four of his books have the day of their acquisition 

 and the price paid clearly written on the first fly-leaf. It is 

 moreover a matter of interest that of the twenty works published 

 and purchased by him between 1650 and 1660 no less than seven 

 were acquired by Goodyer in the year before publication : a clear 

 proof that his enthusiasm for his science led him to keep in the 

 closest touch with the booksellers. 



He appears to have started the practice of dating his books on 

 31 January 161 5 when he acquired Bauhin's 159S folio edition of 

 Matthiolus for ^os. The subsequent dated additions to his library 

 were as follows : 



Date of acquisition. Price. Title and Year of Publication. 



s d 

 13 Novemb. 1616 2 6 Clusius, Curae posteriores, 161 1. 



12 Decemb. 1616 16 o J ,. Rarioruin plantarum, 1601. 



Pona, Monte Haldo, fol. 1601. 



