The real descendants, so to speak, of the herbal are the quaint old still-room books, many of which survive not only in museums and public libraries, but also in country houses. These still-room books, which are a modest branch of literature in themselves, are more nearly akin to herbals than to cookery books, with which they are popularly associated. For they are full of the old herb lore and of the uses of herbs in homely medicines. It must be remembered that even as late as the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries every woman was supposed to have some knowledge of both the preparation and the medicinal use of herbs and simples. When the herbal proper ceased and the first books on botany began to make their appearance the old herb lore did not fall into disuse, and the popularity of the still-room books in which it was preserved may be gathered from the fact that one of the first of these to be printed--_A Choice Manual of rare and select Secrets in Physick & Chirurgerie Collected and practised by the Countesse of Kent[126] (late dec'd)_--went through nineteen editions. There are some old books which merely inspire awe, for one feels that they have always lived in dignified seclusion on library shelves and have been handled only by learned scholars. But there are others whose leaves are so be-thumbed and torn that from constant association with human beings they seem to have become almost human themselves. Of this type are these old still-room books. They were an integral part of daily life and their worn pages bear mute witness to the fact. [Illustration: FRONTISPIECE OF "THE CURIOUS DESTILLATORY," BY THOMAS SHIRLEY, M.D., PHYSICIAN IN ORDINARY TO HIS MAJESTY (1677)] One of the most interesting is the Fairfax still-room book.[127] Its first owner was probably Mary Cholmeley, born during the closing years of Elizabeth's reign, and married in 1626 to the Rev. the Hon. Henry Fairfax (uncle of the great Parliamentarian General--Lord Fairfax).[128] In common with the majority of MS. still-room books, the Fairfax volume contains much that has no immediate connection with a still-room, but is full of human interest. It is a curious medley of culinary recipes, homely cures, housewifely arts such as bleaching, dyeing, brewing and preserving, to say nothing of hastily scribbled little notes regarding lost linen (including no fewer than "xxiii handkerchares!") and the number of fowls, etc., in the poultry-yard. This last entry, which runs all down one side of a page, is as follows: "I Kapon, XVI Torkies, XVIII dowkes, IIII henes, II cokes, X chekins, X giese, IV sowes."