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THE JOURNAL OE T50TANY 
among 
“ the plants commonest in the 
The mention of sun-flowers 
Saxon Gardens ” is, of course, a slip. 
Were it not that other chapters call for notice, it would he 
tempting to linger over the Leech hook and the other Saxon herbals, 
and to follow Miss Rohde in her excellent summary of the early 
popular beliefs which they present with regard to the origin of 
diseases and the charms and other means used to combat them. 
These she illustrates by copious quotations from the translations by 
Oswald Cockayne, published by the Rolls Society in three volumes 
(1864-66) under the title LeecJicloms , Wort cunning , and Star- 
craft in Early England. The absence of any acknowledgement of 
this indebtedness, or indeed of any mention—either in preface, text, 
or bibliography—of Cockayne’s work led to inquiry, in response to 
which Miss Rohde explained that she had assumed that everyone 
must know of it and hence did not think it necessary to mention it. 
Subsequently, however, in a letter to the Times Literary Supplement 
(Jan. 4), wherein attention had been called to the omission, Miss 
Rohde, having stated that “ Cockayne’s translations are the standard 
and only complete translations of the Saxon manuscripts,” allows 
that “there should have been a footnote with the first quotation,” 
and adds : 61 That the omission was accidental is obvious, I hope, from 
the fact that the extracts are in quotation marks and his section 
numbers are given”; this, it seems to us, is hardly “obvious,” in 
view of the fact that neither author nor the book were anywhere 
mentioned. We are not sorry to have this opportunity of calling 
attention to Cockayne’s volumes which— pace Miss Rohde—are not 
by any means well known, at any rate by British botanists; the 
notes on the text contain much plant-lore, and in the third volume 
(pp. 311-350) is a valuable list of “ Saxon Names of Worts and 
Trees from Various Sources ” with notes and identifications, which are 
for the most part correct. 
The second chapter on “ Later Manuscript Herbals and the Early 
Printed Herbals ” yields little in interest to that just considered. It 
is largely occupied with an account of JDe Broprietatihus Berum by 
Bartholomaeus Anglicus—“ the only original treatise on herbs written 
by an Englishman during the Middle Ages.” The little that is 
known of the writer is given; the exact date of the book is not 
known, but there is a copy at Oxford dated 1296, and “other manu¬ 
script copies both in France and in England date from the latter part 
of the thirteenth and the early part of the fourteenth centuries . . . .” 
it was translated into English in 1398 by John de Trevisa, Chaplain 
to Lord Berkeley. The seventeenth chapter is on herbs and their 
uses; “ the descriptions of the plants themselves are original and 
charming, as is shown by examples, and Miss Rohde adds variety 
to her pages by citing some of the “fleeting yet vigorous pictures 
of the homely everyday side of mediaeval life,” of which the book 
is full. Scarcely less noteworthy is the anonymous work known, 
from the name of the printer, as “ Banckes’s Herbal”—“to speak 
strictly the first printed English herbal,”—published in 1525, of 
which numerous forms and editions are enumerated in the bibliography 
appended to the volume. An account of the Grete Herhall (1526) 
