34 



doing something towards reducing to a system ttat natural 

 arrangement of plants, which was no doubt as apparent to our 

 predecessors in the science as to ourselves, although they were 

 then unable through lack of definite knowledge in many 

 essentials, to comprehend it to the same extent as is done in the 

 present day. In the year 1570, Peter Pena and Matthias Lobel 

 published in London their " Stirpium Adversaria Nova," and 

 in 1576, Lobel further published his '' Observationes " which was 

 joined with the " Adversaria." In these works they put together 

 those plants which have most resemblance, as grasses, bulbous 

 plants, trefoils, &c., judging the classes principally by the form 

 of the leaves. In the year 1583, Andreas Caesalpmus, an Italian 

 physician and Professor at Pisa, published a history of plants 

 wherein " he maketh the chief affinity of plants to consist in the 

 similitude of their seeds and seed-vessels." 



The well-known Herbal of John Gerard, first appeared in 

 1597, at London; it is a thick folio containing hundreds of wood- 

 cuts and one of the last printed in black letter. It was based on 

 the works of Dodoens, but the arrangement followed was that of 

 Lobel. The method is best explained by quoting Gerard himself 

 in his introduction to the 1st book of the History of Plants. 



" In three bookes therefore as in three gardens all our plantes are 

 bestowed, sorted as neere as may be in kindred and neighbourhood." 



"The first booke hath grasses, rushes, come, reeds, flags, bulbous, 

 or onion rooted plantes." 



"The second, most sorts of herbes used for meat, medicine, or 

 sweet smelling." 



" The third hath trees, shrubs, bushes, fruit-bearing plantes, rosins,, 

 gummes, roses, heather, mosses, mushroomes, coral, and their several 

 kindes." 



" Each booke hath chapters, as for each herbe a bed." 



The edition of Gerard by which he is best known is that of 

 1633, which was edited by Thomas Johnson, Apothecary, of 

 London, who corrected it and added considerably to the number 

 of plants described ; and in his address to the reader gave a 

 complete History of Botany from the earliest times to his own, a 

 performance of no little merit, forming a basis on which many 

 modern writers can work. 



Other authors noticed in the course of this paper were : 



John Parkinson, author of the " Paradisi in Sole, Paradisus- 

 Terrestris, or a garden of all sorts of pleasant flowers," 1629, and 

 the " Theatrum Botanicum," 1640, in which descriptions were 

 given of some 4,000 plants. 



