119 



towards Gravesend through Sittingbourne and Rochester : and from 

 Gravesend they safely returned to London. 



In the following year Johnson published his edition of Gerarde : we 

 may here quote the following passage from Pulteney, as showing 

 Johnson's part in this great work, in which his botanical excursions 

 were no doubt of great assistance. 



"After what has been said of the plan, as it stands in Gerarde, it 

 remains only to show briefly what Johnson has done. In about 

 twelve pages, he has prefixed a concise, candid, and judicious account 

 of the most material writers on the subject, from the earliest ages to 

 the time in which he wrote ; concluding with a particular account of 

 his own work, from its origin in Dr. Priest's translation. After this 

 follows a table, pointing out, with great precision, all his additions ; 

 by which we learn, that he enriched the work with more than eight 

 hundred plants not in Gerarde, and upwards of seven hundred figures, 

 besides innumerable corrections. By procuring the same cuts that 

 Gerarde used (to which collection a considerable accession had been 

 made), and by having some new blocks cut, his work contained a 

 greater number of figures than any Herbal extant; the whole amount- 

 ing to 2717. Another edition appeared in 1636." 



In 1634 Johnson published his ' Mercurius Botauicus. Sive Plan- 

 tarum gratia suscepti Itineris, Anno M.DC.XXXIV. Descriptio. Cum 

 Earum Nominibus Latinis et Anglicis, &c.' This was an 8vo of 48 

 pages, which is here reprinted line for line and page for page, as is 

 likewise the case with the other tracts in the volume. 



" It is dedicated," says Pulteney, " to Sir Theodore Mayerne, and 

 others of the College, in his own, and the names of his associates in 

 the excursion, who were all of the Company of the Apothecaries. It 

 was the result of a journey, through Oxford, to Bath and Bristol, and 

 back by Southampton, the Isle of Wight, and Guildford, made with 

 the professed design to investigate rare plants. He has described, in 

 not inelegant Latin, their route, which took up only twelve days, and 

 the agreeable reception they met with among their acquaintance.* 

 We meet with a list of exotics, amounting to 117, cultivated by Mr. 

 George Gibbs, a surgeon at Bath, who had made a voyage to Virginia, 

 from whence he brought many new plants ; which, as it exhibits the 

 advanced state of gardening in this country at that time, is now a 

 matter of curiosity. 



* This observation is equally applicable to the Kentish journeys, in which the party 

 were treated with the greatest hospitality. 



