THE SERVICE-TREE 71 



Gerard, in his " Herball," in 1597, speaks of Sorbv.s 

 torminolis as growing in Kent "aboute Southfleete and 

 Gravesend," and also of many small trees in a little 

 wood a mile beyond Islington ; and he had the species 

 in cultivation in his garden in Holborn a year before 

 this. Thomas Johnson enumerates it among the 

 plants of Hampstead Heath in his " Ericetum Ham- 

 stedianum" in 1629; whilst eleven years later we 

 find John Parkinson treating of it in his " Theatrum 

 Botanicum," and very rightly placing Sorbus between 

 the " Wild Ash or Quicken tree " (Pyrus Aucwparia) 

 find the Medlars. The passage is too long to quote, 

 but it suggests that, unlike their predecessors of 

 a century or two earlier, the seventeenth-century 

 botanists, of whom Parkinson is an excellent ex- 

 ample, were no mere book- worms, mere jugglers 

 with the words of Theophrastus and Dioscorides, 

 but were constantly comparing the descriptions of 

 earlier writers with the plants themselves. Though 

 the relative value of characters in tracing the 

 affinity of plants had not then been grasped, though 

 they were ignorant of the physiology of pollination, 

 and had not learnt how the vegetative organs 

 especially are apt to be transformed in adaptation 

 to their immediate environment, it is clear that 

 they were keen and careful observers. If their 

 language lacks the brevity of a technical terminol- 

 ogy, it is not wanting in fundamental clearness ; 

 and even the simplicity of the binominal system of 

 nomenclature commonly ascribed to Linnseus was 

 to a considerable extent in use among them. They 

 studied plants in a wild state, and in their own 



