THE SERVICE-TREE 7 
Gerard, in his “ Herball,” in 1597, speaks of Sorbus 
torminalis as growing in Kent “aboute Southfleete and 
Gravesend,” and also of many small trees in a little 
wood a mile beyond Islington; and he had the species 
in cultivation in his garden in Holborn a year before 
this. Thomas Johnson enumerates it among the. 
plants of Hampstead Heath in his “Ericetum Ham- 
stedianum” in 1629; whilst eleven years later we 
find John Parkinson treating of it in his “ Theatrum 
Botanicum,” and very rightly placing Sorbus between 
the “Wild Ash or Quicken tree” (Pyrus Aucuparia) 
and the Medlars. The passage is too long to quote, 
but it suggests that, unlike their predecessors of 
a century or two earlier, the seventeenth-century 
botanists, of whom Parkinson is an excellent ex- 
ample, were no mere book-worms, mere jugglers 
with the words of Theophrastus and Dioscorides, 
but were. constantly comparing the descriptions of 
earlier writers with the plants themselves. Though 
the relative value of characters in tracing the 
affinity of plants had not then been grasped, though 
they were ignorant of the physiology of pollination, 
and had not learnt how the vegetative organs 
especially are apt to be transformed in adaptation 
to their immediate environment, it is clear that 
they were keen and careful observers. If their 
language lacks the brevity of a technical terminol- 
ogy, it is not wanting in fundamental clearness ; 
and even the simplicity of the binominal system of 
nomenclature commonly ascribed to Linnzus was 
to a considerable extent in use among them. They 
studied plants in a wild state, and in their own 
