OF PHYSIC GARDENS 13 



imagined that certain definite signs and marks on 

 leaves and roots had been divinely stamped for the 

 express purpose of pointing out their restorative 

 powers. Evidences of this belief can be traced in 

 the names of well-known European plants, e.g. 

 hepatica (liverwort) and pulmonaria (lungwort). 

 Inherent qualities of such occult nature, half-hinted 

 at and made as mysterious as ban or benison could 

 make them, served to whet the popular craving for 

 the marvellous ; and no doubt many, if not most 

 of the herbarists of olden time, drove a thriving 

 trade by preying on the superstitious fears of their 

 more ignorant clients. Plenty of fables of the kind 

 over and above the circumstantially related mar- 

 vel of the barnacle-goose tree are to be found in the 

 pages of the best-known of all English writings on 

 simples, the curious old " Herball " of John Gerard 

 a man of no great cultivation, as may be gathered 

 from internal evidence, no less than from the carp- 

 ing allusions continually made to his shortcomings 

 by Thomas Johnson, the editor of a later issue of the 

 " Herball " after Gerard's death, but possessed of 

 intense ambition to take high rank amongst the 

 learned of his time, to which end he devoted in- 

 credible labour, intermingled with no small craft. 

 Perhaps he is not to be judged too severely, for 

 is it not written, " How hard and vncertaine it is 

 to describe in words the true proportion of plants 

 . . . they best know who have deepliest waded in 

 this sea of simples " ? All the same, the planting 

 of a "rare peionie on a conny berry" in Kent, 

 where the old herbarist afterwards pretended to find 

 it growing wild, ought not to be condoned I 



