AN OLD HERBAL 35 



among scholars in the sixteenth and seventeenth 

 centuries to inscribe their names in their books, and 

 book-plates were almost unknown. And that Fuchs' 

 Herbal would have strongly appealed to our botanical 

 Dean must be allowed. Moreover, he must have heard 

 of its publication from his contemporary, Dr Turner, 

 the Dean of Wells. Dr Turner was also a doctor of 

 medicine, and though a Cambridge man had stayed up 

 at Oxford when Dr Warner was Warden of All Souls 

 and Professor of Medicine " for conversation of men 

 and books," and the two men in all probability must 

 have met. At any rate they would know each other 

 as the respective deans of not far distant cathedrals. 

 Dr Turner, too, was a correspondent of Leonhard Fuchs, 

 and moreover utilised his friends' woodcuts to illustrate 

 his own Herbal. It is impossible, therefore, that our 

 Dean could have been ignorant of the magnificent work 

 of the great German botanist, and it would be pleasant 

 to think that when a copy was sent over from Basle to 

 Dr Turner another had been dispatched to Dr Warner, 

 and that this copy he afterwards bequeathed, with the 

 De Medica Materia of Dioscorides and the De Natura 

 Stirpium of Ruellius, to the Cathedral library. If this 

 tracing of the " pedigree " be correct, and it will be 

 admitted that it is not impossible, then an additional 

 interest is attached to our fine copy of Fuchs' Herbal, 

 which in itself is not the least precious volume in our 

 collection. 



