Cole seems to have possessed a philosophic mind, and to have endeavoured to follow his theories to their logical conclusion. He was much exercised because a large proportion of the plants with undoubted medicinal virtues have no obvious signatures. He concluded that a certain number were endowed with signatures, in order to set man on the right track in his search for herbal remedies; the remainder were purposely left blank, in order to encourage his skill and resource in discovering their properties for himself. A further ingenious argument is that a number of plants are left without signatures, because if all were signed, “the rarity of it, which is the delight, would be taken away by too much harping upon one string.” Our author was evidently a keen and enthusiastic collector of herbs. In his book ‘The Art of Simpling’ (1656) he complains bitterly that physicians leave the gathering of herbs to the apothecaries, and the latter “rely commonly upon the words of the silly Hearb-women, who many times bring them _Quid_ for _Quo_, then which nothing can be more sad.” Another strong supporter in this country of the doctrine of signatures was the astrological botanist, Robert Turner. He definitely states that “God hath imprinted upon the Plants, Herbs, and Flowers, as it were in Hieroglyphicks, the very signature of their Vertues.” It is interesting to find that the doctrine of signatures was repudiated by the best of the sixteenth-century herbalists. Dodoens, for instance, wrote in 1583 that “the doctrine of the Signatures of Plants has received the authority of no ancient writer who is held in any esteem: moreover it is so changeable and uncertain that, as far as science or learning is concerned, it seems absolutely unworthy of acceptance[38].” A later writer, Guy de la Brosse, criticised the theory very acutely, pointing out that it was quite easy to imagine any resemblance between a plant and an animal that happened to be convenient. “C’est comme des nuées,” he writes, “que l’on fait ressembler à tout ce que la fantaisie se represente, à une Gruë, à une Grenoüille, à un homme, à une armee, et autres semblables visions[39].”