MANUSCRIPT AND PRINTED HERBALS 65 



Of verbena : " Infants bearing it shalbe very apte to learne 

 and louing learnynge and they shalbe glad and joyous." 



It is the only book on the virtues of herbs in which I have 

 found a recipe to revive drowning flies and bees ! This is to be 

 done by placing them in warm ashes of pennyroyal, and then 

 " they shall recover their lyfe after a little tyme as by ye space 

 of one houre." The book ends with a curious philosophical 

 dissertation, " Of the mervels of the worlde," which is followed 

 by a series of charms to stop a cock crowing, to make men look 

 as though they had no heads, to obtain rule over all birds, to 

 keep flies away from a house, to write letters which can only be 

 read at night, to make men look as though they had " the 

 countenance of a dog," to make men seem as though they had 

 three heads, to understand the language of birds, to make men 

 seem like angels, and to put things in the fire without their 

 being consumed. 



Though lacking in the charm of the quaint and typically 

 English Banckes's Herbal, the most famous of the early printed 

 herbals was the Crete Herball printed by Peter Treveris in I526. 1 



" The grete herball | whiche geueth parfyt knowlege and 

 under- | standyng of all maner of herbes & there gracyous 

 vertues whiche god hath | ordeyned for our prosperous welfare 

 and helth, for they hele & cure all maner | of dyseases and 

 sekenesses that fall or mysfortune to all maner of creatoures j 

 of god created, practysed by many expert and wyse maysters, 

 as Auicenna and | other &c. Also it geueth full parfyte under- 

 standynge of the booke lately pryn | ted by me (Peter treveris) 

 named the noble experiens of the vertuous hand | warke of 

 surgery." 



(Colophon.) " Imprentyd at London in South- | warke by 

 me peter Treueris, dwel- 1 lynge in the sygne of the wodows | In 

 the yere of our Lorde god M.D. | XXVI the XXVII day of July." 



According to the introduction it was compiled from the 

 1 For dates of later editions see Bibliography of English Herbals. 



