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CHAPTER IX 

 BOTANY 



IT is generally conceded that the first eminent English 

 - botanist was William Turner (born probably between 

 1510 and 1515, died 1568), educated at Pembroke College, 

 Cambridge. After the manner of his time, Turner was not 

 only a botanist but a zoologist ; to his work in this subject 

 we shall return later; he was further a most polemical 

 divine, and suffered much with the alternate ebb and flow 

 of the varying religious faiths which prevailed in the country 

 during the Tudor times. Turner's earliest work on botany 

 was the " Libellus de re Herbaria novus," 1538, which may 

 also be regarded as the first English book on Botany. In 

 this he gives, for the first time, the locality of many of our 

 native British plants. Ten years later he published a work 

 on " Names of Herbes in Greke, Latin, Englishe, Duche, 

 and Frenche, with the commune names that Herbaries and 

 Apothecaries use." His best known work, however, was 

 his " Herball," which was published in three parts, the 

 first part appearing in 1551, the second when he was exiled 

 abroad in 1562, and the third in 1568. This was by no 

 means the first " Herball " which had appeared in English, 

 but it had a certain originality about it and a certain 

 independence of view. Turner was especially opposed to 

 what he considered superstitions in science, such as the old 

 legend about the mandrake ; but at the same time he seems 

 to have adopted and perpetuated the fable of the goose -tree 

 which bore barnacles from which geese hatched out. He 

 did not accept this myth without real enquiry and an effort 

 to obtain first-hand information, and he certainly would 

 never have written as Gerard wrote that, " he had seen 

 these trees with his own eyes, and had touched them with 

 his own hands." Turner's days were the days of herbals, 



