REFERENCE BOOKS ON ENGLISH GARDENING LITERATURE. HI 



vertuose boke of Distyllacyon of the Waters of all maner of 

 Herbes," an old " still room " guide in fact. 



1530-40. " Macer's Herbal," octavo, London (Wyer), " prac- 

 tysidly doctor Linacre," two editions (Linacre died in 1524, and 

 is said to have first introduced the Damask Eose from Italy to 

 English gardens). 



1550. A Little Herbal " of the Properties of Herbes," by 

 Antony Ascham, 8vo. 



1538-68. Turner, William, " Libellus de Ke Herbaria 

 Novus," 4to, 8 leaves. J. Byddellum, London, 1538 : a reprint 

 in facsimile and a life of Turner was edited by Mr. B. 0. Jackson 

 in 1877, privately printed. 



1568. The first complete Herbal in English was the work of 

 William Turner, a clergyman born in 1538. His work was com- 

 pleted and printed at Collen in 1568, and is dedicated to the 

 Queen. It is in black letter and has many wood-cuts, accurately 

 drawn and well placed. Turner had studied botany at Bologna 

 and elsewhere on the Continent, to which he had been driven in 

 part by the religious dissensions of the time. His object, as he 

 tells us in an earlier work called " The Names of Herbes " (1548), 

 was to set out " an herbal in Englishe, as Fuchsiusdid in Latin, 

 with the descriptions, figures, and properties of as many herbes as 

 I had sene and knew." 



1570. William Bulleyn, a physician and divine, wrote on 

 gardening about this date, and he deserves mention as having 

 always strenuously upheld the soil and climate of his native 

 land. He was born at Ely, then a great centre of gardening and 

 of fruit culture, and he travelled both at home and on the 

 Continent, studying natural history with zeal and success, at a 

 time when it was not always a popular pursuit. 



1563. Hill, Thomas, " A most briefe and pleasaunt treatyse, 

 teachynge howe to dress, sowe, and set a garden." Small 8vo. : 

 London, T. Marshe. Other enlarged editions appeared in 1568, 

 1574, and in later years, under the title " The Profitable Arte of 

 Gardening," and his latest work, " The Gardener's Labyrinth, 

 containing a discourse of the Gardener's Life," was finished by 

 Henry Dethick, and printed by Henry Bynneman : London, 1577. 

 Small quarto. 



Hill was a literary man rather than a practical gardener, yet 

 to him belongs the credit of having produced the first practical 



