This book throws an interesting light on the early names of British plants. The Primrose is called “Prymerolles” or “saynt peterworte.” The “devylles bytte” is said to be “so called by cause the rote is blacke and semeth that it is iagged with bytynge, and some say that the devyll had envy at the vertue therof and bete the rote so for to have destroyed it.” Duckweed is called “Lentylles of the water” or “frogges fote,” while Cuckoo-pint is known by the picturesque name of “prestes hode,” and Wood-sorrel is called “Alleluya” or “cukowes meate.” One of the most noticeable features of the herbal is the exposure of methods of “faking” drugs, for the protection of the public, “to eschew ye frawde of them that selleth it.” This is a great step in advance from the days of the old Greek herbalists, when secrecy was part of the stock-in-trade of a druggist, and, as we have pointed out in a previous chapter, the credulous public was warned off by threats of the miraculous and fearful ills, which would follow any unskilled meddling with the subject. Another work, which was illustrated with the same figures as those of the Grete Herball, was ‘The vertuose boke of Distillacyon of the waters of all maner of Herbes,’ which appeared in 1527. This was a translation by Laurence Andrew from the ‘Liber de arte distillandi’ of Hieronymus Braunschweig, to which we have already referred. It was almost entirely occupied with an account of methods of distillation, but occasionally there is a picturesque touch of description. For example, in speaking of the Mistletoe, the author says, “This herbe hath a longe slender lefe nother full grene, nor ful yelowe, and bereth a small whyte berye.” The book was printed “in the flete strete by me Laurens Andrewe, in the sygne of the golden Crosse.” CHAPTER IV THE BOTANICAL RENAISSANCE OF THE SIXTEENTH AND SEVENTEENTH CENTURIES 1. THE HERBAL IN GERMANY. In his History of Botany, Kurt Sprengel first used the honoured title, “The German Fathers of Botany,” to describe a group of herbalists—Brunfels, Bock, Fuchs and Cordus—whose work belongs principally to the first half of the sixteenth century.