208 CHAPTERS ON BRITISH BOTANY. \July, 



figures is nearly eight hundred, and these are, on the whole, 

 very fair illustrations of the plants which they are intended to 

 represent. 



His next great work, the greatest that had ever been compiled 

 in England on this subject, appeared eleven years later than 

 the 'Paradisi in Sole,' which was published in 1629, and dedicated 

 to the Queen Henrietta, the consort of Charles the First. 



The Theatre of Plants, ' Theatrum Botanicum,' was published 

 in 1640, four years after Johnson's emaculate edition of Gerard; 

 and it was dedicated to the King. Like most books published 

 at this period, it was introduced by many and highly eulogistic 

 commendations ; one of the most flattering is by Sir Theodore 

 de Mayerne, who panegyrized the Paradise on the Earth. " I 

 know that whosoever shall runne through so many fields, woods, 

 hills, etc., as this work includeth, and shall trip at no time, ' hie 

 erit mihi magnus Apollo ;' I will crowne him with such a gar- 

 land as neither his antecessors or successours ever did or shall 

 weare." This famous physician, of whom there is an account in 

 A. Wood's ' Athense,' had been employed in his medical capacity 

 by four kings, viz. Henry IV. and Louis XIII. of France, and 

 by James I. and Charles I. of England. We have pleasure in 

 recording that this great doctor was one of the notabilities of 

 Chelsea, a locality celebrated for great men, learned professors of 

 the healing arts, and successful botanists, of which last class 

 more will be recorded hereafter. This member of the faculty 

 was interred in the church of St. Martin's-in-the-Fields, where 

 there is a grand monument to his memory, and on which is in- 

 scribed the long catalogue of his virtues. All the good qualities 

 with which humanity has ever been or ever will be characterized, 

 resided in him : — 



" Quid de Mayernio plura ? 

 Mayernium dixeris, omnia dixeris."* 



The MSS. of this royal medical professor are in the Sloane 

 collection, or many of them. Twenty volumes, exclusively on 

 his medical cases, are in his own handwriting, and form the 

 medical annals of the Court during the first half of the seven- 

 teenth century. 



The King's herbarist, the author of the Theatre of Plants, 



* Newport's ' Ile]5ertorium Ecclesiastieum,' 660. 



