INTRODUCTION. IX 



of what was published by these four. Turner's Herbal 

 came out in three parts between 1551 and 1568 ; Lyte's in 

 1578 ; Gerarde's in 1597 ; a new edition of it by T. John- 

 ston in 1632 ; and Parkinson's two works, his Paradisus 

 Terrestris, and his Theatre of Botany, in 1629 and 1643. 

 The Grete Herball, the Little Herbals, and Macer's Herbal, 

 Batman's Bartholomew de Glantvilla, and some other 

 black-letter books of an earlier date than Turner's, are of 

 scarcely any assistance to us, from the difficulty there is to 

 discover by their very inadequate descriptions, what plants 

 they mean. The ancient vocabularies published by Jos. 

 Mayer and Wright, and by Halliwell and Wright, and 

 others in the British Museum* and foreign libraries, are, 

 for the same reason, very seldom available. Some very 

 valuable manuscripts have, since the first edition of this 

 work, been published, with a translation and glossary, by 

 the Rev. Oswald Cockayne, in his " Anglo-Saxon Leech- 

 doms," a work of great interest, and one to which reference 

 is made in the following pages. 



There are distinguished botanists at the present day who 

 look upon popular names as leading to confusion, and a 

 nuisance, and who would gladly abandon them, and ignore 

 their existence. But this is surely a mistake, for there 

 will always be ladies and others, who, with the greatest 

 zeal for the pursuit of Natural History, have not had the 



* I have here the agreeable duty of acknowledging the kindness of Mr. 

 J. J. Bennett, the Curator of the Botanical collections, in most handsomely 

 placing at my disposal many extracts from these manuscripts, that lie had 

 made for a similar undertaking. 



