This herbal contains many evidences of Turner’s independence of thought. He fought against what he regarded as superstition in science with the same ardour with which he entered upon religious polemics. The legend of the human form of the Mandrake receives scant mercy at his hands. As he points out, “The rootes which are conterfited and made like litle puppettes and mammettes, which come to be sold in England in boxes, with heir, and such forme as a man hath, are nothyng elles but folishe feined trifles, and not naturall. For they are so trymmed of crafty theves to mocke the poore people with all, and to rob them both of theyr wit and theyr money. I have in my tyme at diverse tymes taken up the rootes of Mandrag out of the grounde, but I never saw any such thyng upon or in them, as are in and upon the pedlers rootes that are comenly to be solde in boxes.” Turner was, however, by no means the first to dispute the Mandrake superstition; in the Grete Herball of 1526 it is definitely refuted, and it is ignored in some works that are of even earlier date. The hoax was long-lived, for we find Gerard also exposing it in 1597. Turner had a fine scorn for any superstitious notions he detected in the writings of his contemporaries, and seems to have been particularly pleased if he could show that in any disputed matter they were wrong, while the ancients, for whom he had a great reverence, were right. For instance he has a great deal to say about a theory, held by Mattioli, in opposition to the opinions of Theophrastus and Dioscorides, that the Broomrape (_Orobanche_) could kill other plants merely by its baneful presence, without any physical contact. He declares that this view is against reason, authority and experience, and points out that the figure which Mattioli gives is faulty, in omitting to show the roots, which are the real instruments of destruction. He triumphantly concludes, “And as touchynge experience, I know that the freshe and yong Orobanche hath commyng out of the great roote, many lytle strynges ... wherewith it taketh holde of the rootes of the herbes that grow next unto it. Wherefore Matthiolus ought not so lyghtly to have defaced the autorite of Theophrast so ancient and substantiall autor.” Turner’s work is largely occupied with the opinions of early writers, especially Dioscorides, and his respect for their authority is a somewhat curious trait in a character which seems, in other directions, to have been so unorthodox. He did not however treat their books as the last word on the subject, and the third part of his herbal is occupied with plants “whereof is no mention made nether of y^e old Grecianes nor Latines.”