CHAPTER V 



HERBALS OF THE NEW WORLD 



" And I doe wish all Gentlemen and Gentlewomen, whom it may concerne, 

 to bee as careful whom they trust with the planting and replanting of these 

 fine flowers, as they would be with so many Jewels." — Parkinson, Paradisus, 

 1629. 



To English folk and Americans alike the herbals — now 

 amongst the rarest in the EngUsh language — treating of the 

 virtues of herbs in the New World are of exceptional interest. 

 For these contain some of the earhest records of the uses of herbs 

 learnt from the Red Indians, Hsts of Enghsh weeds introduced 

 into America by the first settlers, and, perhaps most interesting 

 of all, what they grew in the first gardens in New England. It 

 requires very little imagination to realise how much the discovery 

 of the New World meant to the botanists, gardeners and 

 herbahsts of that day, for at no time in our history were there 

 greater plant-lovers than in Ehzabethan and Stuart times. 

 In their strenuous lives the soldiers, explorers and sea-captains 

 found time to send their friends in the Old World rare plants 

 and other treasures, and these gifts of " rarities " were cherished 

 as jewels. Is not the following a vivid picture of the arrival 

 of such a package from the New World? "There came a 

 Paket, as of Letters, inrolled in a scare clothe : so well made that 

 thei might passe to any part beeyng never so farre, the whiche 

 beeyng opened, I founde a small Cheste made of a little peece 

 of Corke, of a good thickenesse sette together, whiche was 

 worthie to be seen, and in the holownesse of it came the hearbes, 

 and the seedes that the Letter speaketh of, everythyng written 

 what it was, and in one side of the Corke, in a hollowe place 

 there came three Bezaar stones, cloased with a Parchement and 



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