122 
THE JOURNAL OF BOTANY 
Gerard may have valued it as a relic ” ; the fact that in his portrait 
prefixed to the Herbal he holds in his hand a partial reproduction 
of it may possibly lend support to this suggestion. 
We must leave unnoticed the chapter on “ Herbals of the New 
World,” though here again is much that calls for appreciative com¬ 
ment, noting however in passing that “ the Sloane Collection ” is not 
“in the Victoria and Albert Museum,” but, as our readers know, in the 
Museum of Natural History. The “ Later Seventeenth-Century 
Herbals ” of Culpeper and William Coles are of less importance than 
those of earlier date, though by no means lacking in interest; with 
them are considered “ the quaint old still-room books, the real descen¬ 
dants, so to speak, of the herbal,” of which Miss Rohde’s account, 
with well-chosen extracts, is delightful reading. The well-selected 
illustrations—twentv in number—from the Saxon herbals and other 
works noticed demand a word of praise : the frontispiece (in colour) 
from a twelfth-century MS. in the Library of Eton College calls for 
special mention. 
The student will be especially grateful for the Bibliographies 
which occupy the last fifty pages of the volume ; nothing approach¬ 
ing this in completeness has hitherto appeared. In her preface 
Miss Rohde acknowledges the help of the librarians of various colleges 
of Oxford and Cambridge, Durham University, and of Trinity College, 
Dublin ; of the deans of cathedrals in whose libraries MS. herbals 
are included ; of owners of private libraries, and of others. She is 
thus fully justified in saying that “ no pains have been spared to 
make the bibliographies as complete as possible.” They are grouped 
under three heads—Manuscript Herbals, Treatises on the Virtues of 
Herbs, etc.; English Herbals (printed books) ; and Foreign Herbals: 
each group is arranged chronologically, the dates of the English 
herbals ranging from 1495—the Deproprietatibus rerum of Bartholo- 
mseus Anglicus, already referred to—to Lindley’sFYom Medica (1838). 
In each instance the title is given in full, and in the first section, 
which is of especial value, the libraries containing the various works 
are specified; in many cases useful and interesting comments follow 
the titles. There was doubtless some reason—possibly the exigencies 
of space—which arrested the list at 1838, but one would like to have 
seen included Fliickiger and Hanbury’s Pharmacographia (1874 ; 
ed. 2, 1879), which contains much information cognate to the subject 
of herbals. 
We cannot, however, conclude without expressing our regret that 
Miss Rohde has not included in her book references to the earlier 
work of others in the same field. We have already mentioned this 
omission in relation to Cockayne’s Leechdoms and Dr. Arber’s 
Herbals : but at least as remarkable is the absence of any allusion 
anywhere to the singularly attractive little volume on English Plant 
Names from the Tenth to the Fourteenth Century by the Rev. John 
Earle (Clarendon Press, 1880). This not only contains lists from 
nine vocabularies (including vElfric and Apuleius), but a very readable 
as well as learned introduction of more than a hundred pages in 
which the significance and identification of the old native, plant- 
names are discussed; the notes show the learning we should expect 
