e to the reader shews his own liberal mind: "I
haue thought it meet (good Reader) for thy further profit and pleasure,
to put into English, these foure Bookes of Husbandry, _collected and
set forth_, _by Master Conrade Heresbatch_, a great and a learned
Counceller of the Duke of _Cleues_: not thinking it reason, though I
haue altered and increased his vvorke, _with mine owne readings and
obseruations_, ioined with the experience of sundry my friends, to take
from him (as diuers in the like case haue done) the honour and glory of
his owne trauaile: Neither is it my minde, that this either his doings,
or mine, should deface, or any wayes darken the good enterprise, or
painfull trauailes of such our Countrymen of England, as haue
plentifully written of this matter: but alwayes haue, and do giue them
the reuerence and honour due to so vertuous, and well disposed
Gentlemen, namely, _Master Fitzherbert_, and _Master Tusser_: vvhose
vvorkes may, in my fancie, without any presumption, compare with any,
either _Varro_, _Columella_, or _Palladius_ of _Rome_."

SIR HUGH PLATT, "that learned and great observer," but of whom we know
so little, was, as Mr. Weston, in his Catalogue of English Authors,
informs us, "the most ingenious husbandman of the age he lived in: yet,
so great was his modesty, that all his works seem to be posthumous,
except the _Paradise of Flora_, which appeared in 1600, when it is
probable he was living. He spent part of his time at Copt-hall, in
Essex, or at Bishop's-hall, in Middlesex, at each of which places he had
a country seat; but his town residence was Lincoln's Inn. He held a
correspondence with all lovers of agriculture and gardening throughout
England; and such was the justice and modesty of his temper, that he
always named the author of every discovery communicated to him." In 1606
he had a garden in St. Martin's Lane. A list of his works appears in the
late Dr. Watts's most laborious work, the Bibl. Brit. in 4 vols. 4to. In
his "Floraes Paradise, beautified and adorned with sundry sorts of
delicate fruites and flowers, to be sold in Paule's church-yard, at the
signe of the Holy Ghost, 1608," 12mo. he thus concludes his address to
the studious and well affected reader:--"_And thus, gentle Reader,
hauing acquainted thee with my long, costly, and laborious Collections,
not written at adventure, or by an imaginary conceit in a Scholler's
priuate Studie, but wrung out of the earth, by the painfull hand