104 THE OLD ENGLISH HERBALS 



in connection with the illustrations that James Garret, a London 

 apothecary (and the correspondent of Charles de TEscluse), called 

 Norton's attention to the matter. Norton thereupon asked 

 de rObel to correct the work, and, according to de TObel's own 

 account, he was obliged to make over a thousand alterations. 

 Gerard then stopped any further emendation, on the ground 

 that the work was sufficiently accurate, and declared further 

 that de I'Obel had forgotten the English language. Mr. B. D. 

 Jackson affirms that when one compares the Herbal with the 

 catalogue of the plants in his garden Gerard seems to have been 

 in the right. On the other hand, de I'Obel in his lUustrationes 

 speaks of Gerard with great bitterness and alleges that the latter 

 pilfered from the Adversaria without acknowledgment. 



When one turns to the Herbal one forgets the bitterness 

 of these old quarrels and Gerard's possible duplicity in the never- 

 failing charm of the book itself. It is not merely a translation 

 of Dodoens's Pemptades, for throughout the volume are inserted 

 Gerard's own observations, numerous allusions to persons and 

 places of antiquarian interest, and a good deal of contemporary 

 folk-lore. No fewer than fifty of Gerard's own friends are 

 mentioned, and one realises as one wanders through the pages 

 of this vast book that he received plants from all the then 

 accessible parts of the globe. Lord Zouch sent him rare seeds 

 from Crete, Spain and Italy. Nicholas Lete, a London merchant, 

 was a generous contributor to Gerard's garden and his name 

 appears frequently. Gerard writes of him : " He is greatly in 

 love with rare and faire flowers, for which he doth carefully 

 send unto Syria, having a servant there at Aleppo, and in many 

 other countries." It was Nicholas Lete who sent Gerard an 

 " orange tawnie gilliflower " from Poland. William Marshall, 

 a chirurgeon on board the Hercules, sent him rarities from the 

 Mediterranean. The names which appear most frequently in 

 connection with indigenous plants are those of Thomas Hesketh, 

 a Lancashire gentleman, Stephen Bridwell, " a learned and 

 dihgent searcher of simples in the West of England," James 



