173 A HISTORY OF GARDKXIXG /.V K.\ GLAND. 



this but once, and that was in the companie of Mr. Thomas 

 Smith and Mr. James Clarke, Apothecaries of London, when 

 ridin<^ into W'indsore Forest upon search of rare plants." 



Thomas Johnson was born at Selby, in Yorkshire, but was 

 himself an apothecary of London, and had a shop on Snow 

 Hill. It was in this shop on Snow Hill that the banana was 

 first exhibited in England. Johnson received the bunch of 

 fruit from Dr. Argent, who got it from Iicimuda. Gerard had 

 only seen a pickled specimen sent from Aleppo. Johnson 

 hung the bunch up in his shop until it ripened. He says : 

 •' Some have judged it the forbidden fruit ; other-some the 

 grapes brought to Moses out of the Holy Land." He was 

 the most eminent botanist of the time, and obtained some 

 distinction as a soldier. He joined the army to fight for the 

 Royalist cause, and died from wounds received at Basing in 

 1644. The most important of Johnson's friends and assistants 

 was John Goodyer. He noticed for the first time many native 

 plants, and his knowledge of botany must have been very 

 considerable, from the wa}- in which he is referred to by both 

 Johnson and Parkinson. Thomas Ghnn, and George Bowles, 

 were two other collectors, whose names should not be altogether 

 forgotten. 



Ralph Tuggy is another name not often remembered, and 

 yet, from frequent references to him, he must greatly have 

 helped the progress of gardening. Johnson mentions Tuggy 

 as if he was almost as well-known as Parkinson or the 

 Tradescants, and his garden at Westminster contained 

 many plants then very rare. He was especially famous for 

 his pinks and carnations, and auriculas, and it appears that 

 his widow kept up his garden after his death, which occurred 

 before 1633. Johnson described some eight hundred more 

 plants than Gerard, and added many woodcuts. The total 

 number in the completed Herbal was 2717, and the number 

 of pages in this ponderous folio reached over 1600. 



Between the first appearance of Gerard's Herbal and the 

 second edition, Parkinson had published his Paradisi in sole 

 Paradisus terrcstris, the most popular gardening work of this 

 period. Although the medicinal properties are given a place in 



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