THE GRETE HERBALL 273 
about 1530 which Meyer possessed, being no. 11,669 of Pritzel. 
This latter contains 176 numbered leaves and 22 more, with poor 
print and paper, and rude wood-cuts, smaller and poorer than the 
similar ones of Ortus, though really the same figures. It contains 
5 chapters more than in Secres, 468 in all, Aloe to Zucarum ; 4 of 
the 5 additional having been supplied from Circa instans, which 
it represents quite completely. Its explanatory title states ‘it 
contains the kinds, and powers of herbs, trees, gums, seeds, oils, 
and precious stones, extracted from”? many medical works, as of 
“ Avicenna, Rasis, Constantin, Isaac, Plataire et Ypocras.” The 
colophon omits “‘ Ypocras”’ (Hippocrates), and makes amends by 
elevating Plateario among the canonized as “St. Plataire.” 
9. “ The Grete Herbal, with cuts,” of 1516, first book of its kind 
in English, was a translation from Caron’s 1499 edition of the 
Grant Herbier, with some alterations and additions ; was mistaken 
by Pulteney for a translation of the somewhat similar Ortus 
Sanitatis.’ Its translator is not known, but its printer, Peter 
Treveris, of London, is called its translator by Pritzel ; he printed 
it again with figures in 1525, 1526 and 1529. Meyer points out 
the error of those who thought the translator to be the Louvain 
professor Jeremias Triverius, who died 1554. 
Three other printers reissued it, Laurens Andrews, 1527; 
Thomas Gybson (with corrections, Seguzer, 216), 1539; Jhon 
Kynge (reprinting Gybson’s), 1561. Besides the 7 now men- 
tioned, there was an edition without figures, in 1550. 
The issue of 1526, in the Oxford University Library, contains 
505 chapters each with a small rude woodcut from a block hardly 
two inches square. It adds to the Grant Herbier 30 descriptions 
and figures, an address by the printer, and a treatise De urina. 
Pulteney terms it “the first printed botanical work of any 
consequence or popularity in England,” adding that it “ abounds 
with the barbarous and misspelt names of the middle ages,’ and 
quoting the words of Turner’s Herbal regarding it, that “as yet 
there was no English Herbal but one, all full of unlearned cacog- 
raphies and falsely naming of herbs.” Pulteney remarks that the 
505 chapters are alphabetically arranged by their Latin names ; the 
English name follows the Latin ; the woodcut is prefixed ; there 
is scarce any description, but a statement of temperament, hot or 
