INTRODUCTION. 



William Turner, author of the rare treatise here re- 

 pubh'shed, was a native of Morpeth in Northumberland and is 

 supposed to have been the son of a tanner of that town. By 

 the aid of Thomas, the first Lord Wentworth, he was enabled 

 to enter Pembroke Hall in the University of Cambridge, where 

 he graduated B.A. and was elected a fellow of his College 

 in 1530. At Pembroke he became acquainted with Ridley 

 (who instructed him in Greek) and Latimer, two of the most 

 earnest advocates of the Reformed doctrines, which he him- 

 self, both then and afterwards, strenuously embraced ; but 

 there is no need to dwell upon his theological views or the 

 polemical works in which they were set forth. 



While at Cambridge Turner was a zealous student of 

 botany, and in 1538 published a Libellus de re herbaria. 

 About two years later he left this University for Oxford, and 

 soon after sufifered imprisonment for preaching without a 

 licence. On his release he quitted England, and travelled 

 by way of the Netherlands and Germany to Italy, attending 

 the botanical lectures of Luca Ghini at Bologna, where, or at 

 Ferrara, he took the degree of M.D. 



Thereafter he proceeded to Switzerland, forming a close 

 friendship with the great naturalist Conrad Gesner of Zurich, 

 Professor of Medicine and Philosophy in the School of that 

 city, who held him in high esteem, and with whom he after- 

 wards kept up a correspondence. He seems to have been at 

 Basel in 1543, but early in 1544 he was at Cullen (Cologne), 

 where he published not only the present work — dedicated 



