16 



In the 2nd vol. of Censura Litt. is some information re- 

 specting Sir Hugh. 



GABRIEL PLATTES, who (Harte says) " had a bold, adven- 

 turous cast of mind." The author of " Herefordshire Or- 

 chards," calls him " a singular honest man. r Mr. Weston 

 says, " This author may be considered as an original genius 

 in husbandry. This ingenious writer, whose labours were 

 productive of plenty and riches to others, was so destitute 

 of the common necessaries of life, as to perish with hunger 

 and misery. He was found dead in the streets, without a 

 shirt to cover him, to the eternal disgrace of the government 

 he lived under. He bequeathed his papers to S. Hartlib, 

 whom a contemporary author addresses in this manner: 

 ' none (but yourself, who wants not an enlarged heart, but a 

 fuller hand to supply the world's defect,) being found, with 

 some few others, to administer any relief to a man of so great 

 merit.' Another friend of Hartlib's, gives Plattes the follow- 

 ing character: * certainly that man had as excellent 'a genius 

 in agriculture, as any that ever lived in this nation before 

 him, and was the most faithful seeker of his ungrateful coun- 

 try's good. I never think of the great judgement, pure zeal, 

 and faithful intentions of that man, and withal of his strange 

 sufferings, and manner of death, but am struck with amaze- 

 ment, that such a man should be suffered to fall down dead 

 in the streets for want of food, whose studies tended in no 

 less than providing and preserving food for whole nations, 

 and that with as much skill and industry, so without pride or 

 arrogance towards God or man.' A list of his many works 

 appears in Watts's Bibl. Brit, and also in Weston's intelli- 

 gent Catalogue ; and much information is given of Plattes in 

 vol. 2 of the Censura Litteraria. Two of his works appear 

 to be, 



1. Treatise of Husbandry; 1633, 4to. 



