TORREYA 



August, igio 

 Vol. lo No. 8 



ADAM IN EDEN OR NATURE'S PARADISE * 



Extracts by Jean Broadhurst 



Years ago, before the museum building of the New York 

 Botanical Garden was completed, Professor Lucien M. Under- 

 wood showed me some of the quaint and rare books in the 

 library. Among them none interested me more than an old 

 herbal written by William Coles and printed " at the Angel in 

 Cornhil near the Royal Exchange in 1657." A. Bronson Alcott 

 says that " the old herhals, too, with all their absurdities, are still 

 tempting books ", and so I found this one by Coles, which he 

 naively calls Adam in Eden or Nature's Paradise. Since then 

 my guests at the Garden have always been introduced to this 

 time-browned volume with its little, incongruous, gummed label ; 

 and the interest shown has suggested the printing of these ex- 

 tracts, that all may have access to an expurgated edition of this 

 rare old book. 



Botanists may be interested in the plant descriptions ; some are 

 " descriptions which do not describe " and some are strikingly 

 simple and distinctive. How little was generally known of the 

 non-flowering plants is shown by the description of the polypody 

 fern where the sori or fruit dots are ingeniously explained. 



The derivation of many of our common words is suggested in 

 such unusual spellings as zvood bind for zvoodbine, onely for 

 only, and then for than; and the rare use of the possessive 

 apostrophe raises a question as to the time of its general intro- 

 duction into the English language and what spellings may the 

 C advocates fand the opponents) of simplified spelling not cham- 

 2/ pion where names are spelled in three ways in one paragraph ! 



''"" * Illustrated with the aid of the Catherine McManes fund. 



^^■^ [No. 7, Vol. 10, of TORREYA, Comprising pages 145-168, was issued Aug. i, 1910 ' 



CJ 169 



