Gerard says that the eight kinds he enumerates 

 were then commonly grown in the gardens about 

 London, but it is evident they were not much es- 

 teemed ; nor is any notice taken of raising varieties 

 from seed. 



This neglect soon passed away, for Johnson, in his 

 edition of Gerard, published in 1633, says that there 

 were then a very great many varieties of these flowers 

 growing in the gardens of Mr. Tradescant and Mr. 

 Tuggie. Tradescant' s garden was at Lambeth, and 

 he, at the time Johnson wrote, was gardener to 

 Charles I. Tradescant was a Dutchman ; and there 

 is little room for doubting, that, bringing with him 

 that knowledge of floriculture for which his country- 

 men were even then justly famed, he applied it to the 

 improvement of the Auricula, which in Holland had 

 been neglected. At all events, the attention then 

 paid to this flower in England was as great even as 

 at present. "We had the credit then of supplying the 

 Dutch florists with an endless variety of new sorts ; 

 whereas, latterly, we have been in the habit of receiv- 

 ing supplies of this plant every year from them, till 

 the late war closed all communication between the 

 two countries. {Emmertons Auricula, 2.) 



Parkinson, in his "Paradisus," published in 1656, 



says that '* those who had been industrious in sowing 



the seeds of the several sorts" had so succeeded in 



raising varieties that he should not be able to enume- 



b2 



