than Thistle downe which is much used in some places for the like
purpose." That, if ivory is boiled with mandrake root for six hours,
the ivory will become so soft "that it will take what form or
impression you will give it." That fresh elder flowers, hung in a
vessel of new wine and pressed every evening for seven nights together,
"giveth to the wine a very good relish and a smell like Muscadine."
That the moth mullein is of no use except that it will attract moths
wherever it is laid. That if pennyroyal is put into "unwholesome and
stinking waters that men must drinke (as at sea in long voyages) it
maketh them the less hurtful." And to conclude, it is from Parkinson we
learn that "Queen Elizabeth of famous memorie did more desire
medowsweet then any other sweete herbe to strewe her chambers withall."
[Illustration: PORTRAIT OF JOHN PARKINSON FROM THE TITLE-PAGE OF
THE "PARADISUS" (1629)]
FOOTNOTES:
[88] See _Theatrum Botanicum_, p. 609.
[89] Both John Tradescant and his son were gardeners to Charles I. and
Henrietta Maria. John Tradescant the elder is said by Anthony à Wood
to have been a Fleming or a Dutchman, but this is doubtful. The name
is neither Flemish nor Dutch but probably English, and in the
inscription on his tomb in Lambeth Churchyard he and his son are
described as "both gardeners to the rose and lily queen." This was
Henrietta Maria. Parkinson in his _Paradisus_ speaks of him as "that
painfull industrious searcher and lover of all nature's varieties."
Tradescant accompanied Sir Dudley Digges on his voyage round the North
Cape to Archangel, and on his return wrote an account of the plants he
had found in Russia--the earliest extant record of plants in that
part. It is interesting to note that in this he compares the soil of
Russia to that of Norfolk. In 1620 Tradescant joined an expedition
against the Algerine corsairs as a gentleman volunteer, and he also
accompanied the Duke of Buckingham (George Villiers), to whom he had
formerly been gardener, on the ill-fated expedition to La Rochelle. On
Buckingham's death he entered the royal service, and probably at this
time established his well-known physic garden and museum at Lambeth.
The house was called Tradescant's ark. There are three unsigned and
undated portraits of the elder Tradescant in the Ashmolean Collection
at Oxford.
[90] It also figures on the title-page of Parkinson's _Theatrum
Botanicum_.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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