4 ° 
THE GARDENS OF WARLEY PLACE, 
BRENTWOOD, ESSEX. 
By J. C. SHENSTONE, F L S. 
[With Plates ///., JV. and V., and four other illustrations .] 
E SSEX has figured in books upon plants and gardens from 
the time when English gardening emerged from the 
obscurity of the medieval period. Our county was a favourite 
collecting ground of John Gerard (1545-1612), who wrote the 
first “ Herbal ” in the English language, and we learn from this 
book that Gerard explored Essex very thoroughly in search 
of plants. About one hundred years later John Ray (1627- 
Warley Place. 
1705) was bonGatJ Black Notley, where he lived during the 
later period of|his life, and where most of his scientific work 
was accomplished. John Ray was one of the great botanists 
of the world, and one of the first to classify plants successfully ; 
indeed, much of his work is accepted at the present day. During 
the same period Samuel Dale (1659-1739), an apothecary and 
physician at Braintree, and a friend of Ray’s, wrote his Phartna- 
cologia, one of the most useful of the later “ Herbals.” 1 Passing 
by another hundred years, we find Samuel Curtis, a celebrated 
gardener, and for some time J proprietor of Curtis ’ Botanical 
1 See History of Botany in Essex, by Professor G. S. Boulger, F.L.S., in Essex Naturalist 
vol. xi., pp. 61-68 and pp. 169-173. 
