iv] The Herbal in England 103 



Hall, Cambridge, he endeavoured to learn the names of 

 plants, but, " suche was the ignorance in simples at that 

 tyme," that he could get no information on the subject, 

 even from physicians. He claims that his herbal has con- 

 siderable originality — a claim which seems well founded. 

 In his own words — "they that have red the first part 

 of my Herbal, and have compared my writinges of plantes 

 with those thinges that Matthiolus, Fuchsius, Tragus, and 

 Dodoneus wrote in y e firste editiones of their Herballes, 

 maye easily perceyve that I taught the truthe of certeyne 

 plantes, which these above named writers either knew not 

 at al, or ellis erred in them greatlye.... So yt as I learned 

 something of them, so they ether might or did learne som- 

 thinge of me agayne, as their second editions maye testifye. 

 And because I would not be lyke unto a cryer y l cryeth 

 a loste horse in the marketh, and telleth all the markes and 

 tokens that he hath, and yet never sawe the horse, nether 

 coulde knowe the horse if he sawe him : I wente into Italye 

 and into diverse partes of Germany, to knowe and se the 

 herbes my selfe." 



This herbal contains many evidences of Turner's inde- 

 pendence of thought. He fought against what he regarded 

 as superstition in science with the same ardour with which 

 he entered upon religious polemics. The legend of the 

 human form of the Mandrake receives scant mercy at his 

 hands. As he points out, "The rootes which are conter- 

 fited and made like litle puppettes and mammettes, which 

 come to be sold in England in boxes, with heir, and such 

 forme as a man hath, are nothyng elles but folishe feined 

 trifles, and not naturall. For they are so trymmed of crafty 

 theves to mocke the poore people with all, and to rob them 

 both of theyr wit and theyr money. I have in my tyme 

 at diverse tymes taken up the rootes of Mandrag out of the 

 grounde, but I never saw any such thyng upon or in them, 

 as are in and upon the pedlers rootes that are comenly to 

 be solde in boxes." Turner was, however, by no means 

 the first to dispute the Mandrake superstition ; in the 

 Grete Herball of 1526 it is definitely refuted, and it is 

 ignored in some works that are of even earlier date. The 

 hoax was long-lived, for we find Gerard also exposing it in 



1597- 



