136 CHAPTERS ON BRITISH BOTANY. [Mat/, 



feeling for and a sympathy with suffering humanity ; and he 

 wrote his ' Herbal ' not to show the extent and variety of his ac- 

 quirements, nor principally that he might contribute to the en- 

 lightenment of his contemporaries and posterity, but he laboured 

 with a more charitable intention, viz. with the view of alleviating 

 the ailments incident to the sinful and mortal condition of hu- 

 manity. 



In his preface he very forcibly apologizes for the language he 

 employs, and asks " whether it were better that many men should 

 be killed through the apothecary's ignorance of Latin, or that 

 the herball should be set forth in English?" And again, he says, 

 " Whether it were better that the surgeons should kill men for 

 lack of knowledge of herbs, or that an herball should be set out 

 into them in English, which for the most part understand no 

 Latin at all, saving such as no Latin ears can abide?" (See 

 Dedication, fol. 2.) These are pertinent questions, and the man 

 who had the moral courage to contravene the conventionalities of 

 his age deserves to be ranked among the prominent advocates of 

 human progress. 



Dr. Turner's erudition, judgment, industry, observation, and 

 experience, were universally acknowledged by his contemporaries, 

 but the honour which they paid to his meritorious abilities was 

 too much like the cold tribute rendered to honesty, if we may 

 credit the Latin moralist, who casts a little of the salt of satire 

 into his moral hash: " Probitas laudatur et alget" (honesty is 

 praised, and, shivering with cold, it starves). 



Lobel, the contemporary of Turner, writes in his ' Adversaria,' 

 p. 93, ed. 1756, eight years after the Doctor's decease, that he 

 had seeds of Crambe maritima from him, *'cujus semina jam 

 diu medicus Anglus hac parte exercitatissimus, Turnerus nos 

 donarat eamque monocaulum et fiovoairepfjuov vocanda.m a se- 

 mine singular! volebat " (and who wished it to be named mono- 

 caulis and monospermous from its single seed). On referring to 

 Turner's ' Herbal ' we cannot find this account, which Lobel pro- 

 bably quoted from memory, without reference either to the 

 'Herbal' or to the communication. The Dover Cole will be 

 subsequently noticed. Lobel, in his congratulatory epistle to 

 John Gerard on the accomplishment of the great work of the last- 

 mentioned author, gives Turner a place among his botanical 

 worthies, Matthiolus Dodonseus, Turnerus, Clusius, etc. Gerard 



