ELIZABETHAN GARDEN LITERATURE 149 



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 is known from other sources also to have been 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 go through the 

 list of all those referred to by Gerard, as they are very numerous, 

 and the muster-roU of these helpful friends could be greatly added 

 to by looking into the 1633 edition, where Johnson's acquaint- 

 ances 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 this but once, and that was in the companie of 

 Mr. Thomas Smith and Mr. James Clarke, Apothecaries of 

 London, when riding into Windsore Forest upon search of rare 

 plants." 



Thomas Johnson was bom at Selby, in Yorkshire, but was 

 himself an apothecary of London, and had a shop on Snow Hill. 

 Here it was that the banana was first exhibited in England, 

 Gerard having only seen a pickled specimen sent from Aleppo. 

 Johnson received the bunch of fruit from Dr. Argent, who had 

 obtained it from Bermuda, and hung it up in his shop until it 

 ripened. He says : " Some have judged it the forbidden fruit ; 

 other-some the grapes brought to Moses out of the Holy Land." 

 He was the most eminent botanist of the time, and obtained 

 some distinction as a soldier. He joined the army to fight for 

 the Royalist cause, and died from wounds received at Basing in 



