r, quoniam supplicamus, &c. Salutem
quidem sine his posse constare, vel ob id probabimus, ut tanto magis
sui tandem pudeat."

For my part, I doubt not if the use of outlandish drugs had not blinded
our physicians of England in times past, but that the virtues of our
simples here at home would have been far better known, and so well unto us
as those of India are to the practitioners of those parts, and thereunto
be found more profitable for us than the foreign either are or may be.
This also will I add, that even those which are most common by reason of
their plenty, and most vile because of their abundance, are not without
some universal and special efficacy, if it were known, for our benefit:
sith God in nature hath so disposed his creatures that the most needful
are the most plentiful and serving for such general diseases as our
constitution most commonly is affected withal. Great thanks therefore be
given unto the physicians of our age and country, who not only endeavour
to search out the use of such simples as our soil doth yield and bring
forth, but also to procure such as grow elsewhere, upon purpose so to
acquaint them with our clime that they in time, through some alteration
received from the nature of the earth, may likewise turn to our benefit
and commodity and be used as our own.

The chief workman (or, as I may call him, the founder of this device) is
Carolus Clusius, the noble herbarist whose industry hath wonderfully
stirred them up unto this good act. For albeit that Matthiolus, Rembert,
Lobell, and others have travelled very far in this behalf, yet none hath
come near to Clusius, much less gone further in the finding and true
descriptions of such herbs as of late are brought to light. I doubt not
but, if this man were in England but one seven years, he would reveal a
number of herbs growing with us whereof neither our physicians nor
apothecaries as yet have any knowledge. And even like thanks be given unto
our nobility, gentlemen, and others, for their continual nutriture and
cherishing of such homeborne and foreign simples in their gardens: for
hereby they shall not only be had at hand and preserved, but also their
forms made more familiar to be discerned and their forces better known
than hitherto they have been.

And even as it fareth with our gardens, so doth it with our orchards,
which were never furnished with so good fruit nor with such variety as at
this present. For, beside that we