14 INTRODUCTION TO BOTANY. 
he says, “a student of Pembroke Hall, where I could 
learn never one Greke, neither Latin, nor English name, 
even among the physicians, of any herbe or tree, such 
was the ignorance at that time; and as yet there was no 
English Herbal, but one” (the great Herbal just men- 
tioned) * all full of unlearned cacographies, and falsely 
naming of herbs.” He went into holy orders, and was a 
celebrated preacher as well as a physician, and lived for 
some time in Germany, where his fondness for botany led 
him to have a botanic garden at Weissenberg; and also 
in Italy, where he procured the foundation of a public 
botanic garden to be attached to the university of Bologna. 
-After which he returned to England, and being made 
Dean of Wells, divided his time between that place and 
his house in Crutched Friars, London. He had a botanic 
garden not only at Wells, but also at Kew. His attain- 
ments in science were not confined to Botany alone, but 
extended to the knowledge of birds and fishes, in which 
respects he assisted his friend Gesner in his Historia Ani- 
malium, and also paid attention to mineral waters, of 
which he published a small tract, annexed to his Herbal ; 
to say nothing of his numerous religious books, and his 
collation and correction of the Bible. 
The complete edition of Turner’s Herbal, which was 
originally published in three parts, was printed at Cologne 
in 1568, embellished with upwards of 400 figures, which 
had been used for the octavo edition of Fuchs; and about 
90 new figures, making in all 502. In the Dedication he 
mentions his contemporary botanists of England, viz. Dr. 
Clement, Dr. Merdy, Owen Wooton, and Mr. Falconer, 
who appears to have had a hortus siccus of foreign as well 
as Enelish plants. ‘Turner was the introducer of lucerne 
into Eneland, by the name of horned clover; and 
throughout the whole of his Herbal he appears to have 
exhibited uncommon diligence and great erudition, and 
fully to deserve the character of an original writer. Our 
English herbalists, Gerarde, Johnson, and Parkinson, do 
not appear to have been sufficiently just to his merits; but 
Ray was very sensible of his worth, styling him a man of 
solid erudition and judement. 
Botany was also pursued at the same time in Germany 
by Tragus, who published in 1552; and in the next year 
Dodoens, a Fleming, began to publish his Herbal, which 
was the first in which the alphabetical lists of plants were 
exchanged for some gross arrangement. In the ‘present 
8 
