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14 INTRODUCTION TO BOTANY.
he says, " a student of Pembroke Hall, where I could
learn never one Greke, neither Latin, nor English name,
even among the physicians, of any herbe or tree, such
was the ignorance at that time ; and as yet there was no
English Herbal, but one" (the great Herbal just mentioned)
" all full of unlearned cacographies, and falsely
naming of herbs." He went into holy orders, and was a
celebrated preacher as well as a physician, and lived for
some time in Germany, where his fondness for botany led
him to have a botanic garden at Weissenberg ; and also
iji Italy, where he procured the foundation of a public
botanic garden to be attached to the university of Bologna.
-After which he returned to England, and being made
Dean of Wells, divided his time between that place and
his house in Crutched Friars, London. He had a botanic
garden not only at Wells, but also at Kew. His attainments
in science were not confined to Botany alone, but
extended to the knowledge of birds and fishes, in which
respects he assisted his friend Gesner in his Historia Animalium,
and also paid attention to mineral waters, of
which he published a small tract, annexed to his Herbal
to say nothing of his numerous religious books, and his
collation and correction of the Bible.
The complete edition of Turner's Herbal, which was
originally published in three parts, was printed at Cologne
in 1568, embellished with upwards of 400 figures, which
had been used for the octavo edition of Fuchs ; and about
90 new figures, making in all 502. In the Dedication he
mentions his contemporary botanists of England, viz. Dr.
Clement, Dr. Merdy, Owen Wooton, and Mr. Falconer,
who appears to have had a hortus siccus of foreign as well
as English plants. Turner was the introducer of lucerne
into England, by the name of horned clover ; and
throughout the whole of his Llerbal he appears to have
exhibited uncommon diligence and great erudition, and
fully to deserve the character of an original writer. Our
English herbalists, Gerarde, Johnson, and Parkinson, do
not appear to have been sufficiently just to his merits; but
Ray was very sensible of his worth, styling him a man of
solid erudition and judgment.
Botany was also pursued at the same time in Germany
by Tragus, who published in 1552; and in the next year
Dodoens, a Fleming, began to publish his Flerbal, which
was the first in which the alphabetical lists of plants were
exchanged for some gross arrangement. In the present
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