114 



Notice of ' Opuscula omnia Botanica Thomce Johnsoni, Pharma- 

 ceuliccR Societatis Londinensis Socii. Nuperrime edita a 

 T. S. Ralph, e (Jollegio Regali Chirurgorum Angliae, et Socie- 

 tate Lhmeana Loud. Londini : Suraptibus Guliel. Pamplin. 

 M.DCCC.XLV1I.' 



Some six or eight pages in Pulteney's ' Sketches of the Progress of 

 Botany,' contain the substance of all that seems to be known with 

 any degree of certainty respecting one who, in his twofold capacity, is 

 said by Wood to have been in his day " no less eminent in the gar- 

 rison for his valour and conduct as a soldier, than famous through the 

 kingdom for his excellency as an herbalist and physician." This was 

 Thomas Johnson, the learned editor of Gerarde's ' Herbal,' which^was 

 so greatly improved by his editorial labours as to have elicited from 

 Haller the well-deserved encomium — " dig mini opus, et totius ret 

 herbaria eo <evo nota, compendium." 



Johnson was a native of Selby, in Yorkshire, and educated as an 

 apothecary. He had a shop on Snow Hill, London, " where," says 

 Wood, as quoted by Pulteney, " by his unwearied pains, advanced 

 with good natural parts, he attained to be the best herbalist of his age 

 in England." 



Johnson made his first appearance as an author in 1629, when he 

 published his ' Iter in Agrum Cantianum,' and ' Ericetum Hamstedi- 

 auum.' Pulteney says that he never saw either of these catalogues, 

 and does not appear to have been aware that they were followed, in 

 1632, by two much more extensive lists of plants collected in the 

 county of Kent and on Hampstead Heath and its vicinity in the latter 

 year ; since in the only place where they are mentioned in his sketch 

 of Johnson, he assigns the date of 1629 to the 'Iter Cantianum,' and 

 that of 1632 to the 'Ericetum Hamstedianum.' 



These tracts have for many years been extremely rare; and although 

 modem botanists may perhaps be disposed to look upon them as 

 possessing but little scientific value, they are, to say the least, ex- 

 ceedingly interesting as being the first local catalogues of British plants 

 ever published in England ; and we cannot but express our gratitude 

 to the spirited projector and publisher of the elegant reprint before us, 

 for enabling the British botanist to compare these the earliest records 

 of botanical research with the present enlarged enumerations of the 

 plants of our island. 



The first tract in the volume has for its title, ' Iter Plantarum In- 

 vestigations ergo susceptum, a Decern Sociis, in Agrum Cantianum, 



