g under a sequestered hedge "on
the left hand as you go from the village of Hampstead, near London, to
the church," or that "this amiable and pleasant kind of primrose" (a
sort of oxlip) was first brought to light by Mr. Hesketh, "a diligent
searcher after simples," in a Yorkshire wood. While the groundlings
were crowding to see new plays by Shirley and Massinger, the editor of
this volume was examining fresh varieties of auricula in "the gardens
of Mr. Tradescant and Mr. Tuggie." It is wonderful how modern the
latter statement sounds, and how ancient the former. But the garden
seems the one spot on earth where history does not assert itself, and,
no doubt, when Nero was fiddling over the blaze of Rome, there were
florists counting the petals of rival roses at Paestum as peacefully
and conscientiously as any gardeners of to-day.

The herbalist and his editor write from personal experience, and this
gives them a great advantage in dealing with superstitions. If there
was anything which people were certain about in the early part of
the seventeenth century, it was that the mandrake only grew under a
gallows, where the dead body of a man had fallen to pieces, and that
when it was dug up it gave a great shriek, which was fatal to the
nearest living thing. Gerard contemptuously rejects all these and
other tales as "old wives' dreams." He and his servants have often
digged up mandrakes, and are not only still alive, but listened
in vain for the dreadful scream. It might be supposed that such a
statement, from so eminent an authority, would settle the point, but
we find Sir Thomas Browne, in the next generation, battling these
identical popular errors in the pages of his _Pseudodoxia Epidemica_.
In the like manner, Gerard's botanical evidence seems to have been of
no use in persuading the public that mistletoe was not generated out
of birdlime dropped by thrushes into the boughs of trees, or that its
berries were not desperately poisonous. To observe and state the truth
is not enough. The ears of those to whom it is proclaimed must be
ready to accept it.

Our good herbalist, however, cannot get through his sixteen hundred
accurate and solemn pages without one slip. After accompanying him
dutifully so far, we double up with uncontrollable laughter on p.
1587, for here begins the chapter which treats "of the Goose Tree,
Barnacle Tree, or the Tree bearing Geese." But even here the habit of
genuine observation clings to him. The