for the collector. Years later, Sir Henry Wotton could say, "I know all the plants of my time, and have scarcely simpled farther than Cheapside," In Gerarde's day wild flowers grew all over London; the water violet was found at Lambeth; "a field at Southwark, back of the theatre," the Globe Theatre, was all abloom; wall rue grew on Westminster Abbey, and wall pennyivort over "the door that leadeth from Chaucer's tomb to the old Palace," while bugloss mantled "the drie ditch banks in Pickedille." In "An Address to the well Affected Reader and Peruser of this Booke," he says, "Myselfe, one of the least among many, have presumed to set forth vnto the view of the world, the first fruits of my owne Labours." But he was meanwhile "constrained to seeke after his living, being void of friends to beare some parte of the burden." He further notes the difficulties which beset an honest searcher after truth, saying, "Let a man excell neuer so much in any excellent knowledge, neuer the les many times he is not so much regarded as a lester, a Booster, a Quacksaluer, or Mountebank."
Gerarde was born at Namptwich in Cheshire, in the year 1545. Thence he came early to London, and both as gardener in the lordly domains of Cecil and as an apothecary, he made wise use of the knowledge gained as "a paineful Herbarist" and "a curious searcher of simples." He studied surgery, and practiced to some extent in the empirical methods of the time, but his heart was centered in his garden at Holborn. There was his seminary, or "seed plot and nursery for young plants," as the word is defined in Bailey's Dictionary. There he collected the English flora, and established many foreign plants, studying their habits, their possible uses, and their adaptation to the climate of England. His diligence in searching out new species was unwearied. Drayton alludes to his work as the limit of possible accomplishment:
"To those unnumbered sorts of simples here that grew,
Which justly to set down even Dodon short doth fall,
Nor skillful Gerard yet shall ever find them all."
Botanists of to-day say that Gerarde knew little of science, but it is worth while to consider what science was in the sixteenth century, when the glamour of alchemy and of astrology diffused a false light over every department of natural philosophy. Gerarde died in 1607, just one hundred years before Linnasus was born, and a dozen years before the birth of John Ray, who laid the corner stone of the natural system and made the first formal catalogue of British plants. For a man then to have studied in any spirit of careful observation means much. His belittlers emphasize Gerarde's ignorance of the classic writers on botany. He might be none the worse for that, but he quotes with discrimination from Theophrastus and
