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18 INTRODUCTION TO BOTANY.
which has ever been one of the favourite resorts of the
London botanists. His great work was a new edition of
Gerarde's Herbal, with numerous additional articles, by
which it included in all 2850 plants, with 2730 figures.
As this work included foreign plants as well as native ones,
he published, in the next year, his " Mercurius Botanicus,"
which exhibited a list of the plants he found in a
botanical excursion to the west of England ; so that he
was the first author who began to distinguish the native
plants from the others.
Parkinson published his " Paradisus," or Flower and
Fruit Garden, in 1629, a work which shows, that at this
time the gardens of our forefathers were far better stocked
than we imagine. His profession of an apothecary, or, as
it is now called, that of a chemist and druggist, taking up
much of his time, and the time necessary for cutting a new
set of figures, delayed the publication of his general history,
or Theatre of Plants, which is more extensive than
those of Gerarde or Johnson, as it contains 3800 plants,
with 278G figures. The descriptions are new, and the
whole has a true botanical cast, whereas both G^^rarde and
Johnson were intended more for mere medical use.
The reign of the second Charles was extremely favourable
to the knowledge of plants. Gardening and planting
were in high vogue, and among the authors in this department
Evelyn stands pre-eminent: in 1658 he published his
French Gardener; in 1664 his Sylva, or Treatise on
Forest-trees, to which his Kalendarium Hortense, the first
specimen of this kind, was annexed as an appendix ; and
in a fourth edition he also added Pomona, or a Treatise on
Fruit-trees; in 1675 his Terra, or a Philosophical Discourse
on Earth. But this reign is still more remarkable
for the attention paid to British botany. In 1650 Dr. How
made llie first attempt to give, in his Phytologia, a complete
list of the British plants, of which he enumerated
1220. A still larger list was afterwards given by Dr. Merrett,
in his Pinax, published in 1667; a very useful work,
which included not only 14-00 British plants, but also
mentioned the animals and minerals then known to be
produced in these islands. Three years afterwards the
celebrated Ray, who had already entered upon his career
of natural history, by publishing, in 1660, his Catalogus
Plantarum circa Cantabrigiam nascentium, extended his
Catalogue to a general one of the British islands, and
eniunerated only 1050 species, rejecting many of those
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