ELIZABETHAN GARDEN LITERATURE. 171 



louingly imparted to me " a Solomon's seal received from 

 Clusius. The names of some people, however, occur so 

 frequently, that we can gather more particulars about them. 

 Thomas Hesketh is constantly referred to, as collecting certain 

 plants chiefly in Lancashire and the North of England, and 

 sending specimens to Gerard to grow in his garden. Thomas 

 Edwards, of Exeter, was also a botanist, and collector of 

 English wild flowers. Master Nicholas Lete, Merchant, of 

 London, not only himself searched for flowers, both in England 

 and France, ^but was so " greatly in loue with rare and faire 

 floures and plants ... he doth carefully send into Syria hauing 

 a servant there at Aleppo,, and in many other countries, for 

 the which, my selfe and likewise the whole land are much bound 

 unto him." One of the plants he brought to this country 

 was a cabbage "with crincly leaves" of a " blewish green." 

 Gerard mentions also his procuring a yellow gillyflower from 

 Poland, showing the extensive range of his collectors. Gerard 

 also had a collector, William Marshall, whom he "sent into 

 the Mediterranean," and who brought him from thence the 

 seeds of the plane-tree, and plants of the prickly pear or 

 " Prickly Indian Fig-tree." 



James Garret, we know from other sources also, was a 

 skilful gardener, and especially clever at growing tulips. He was 

 a " learned apothecary of London," and a good Latin scholar, 

 and was generous in imparting knowledge and giving plants to 

 both Gerard and Clusius. It would be tedious to enumerate 

 all the friends referred to by Gerard, as they are very numerous, 

 and the list of these helpful friends could be greatly added to 

 by looking into the 1633 edition where Johnson's acquaintances 

 are as prominent as those of Gerard. It is refreshing to see 

 the way in which these old herbalists wrote to each other, and 

 helped one another. Johnson, even more than Gerard, worked 

 in harmony with other botanists and physicians, and they went' 

 expeditions together in search of rare flowers. Johnson wrote 

 some Latin tracts descriptive of these tours he made with 

 friends in the South and West of England, and constantly in 

 the Herbal references to his rambles with other collectors 

 occur. In writing of a kind of grass he says : " I never found 



