[43] Under "Birch" there is another touch of life in the woods in the Middle Ages. "Wylde men of wodes and forestes useth that sede instede of breede [bread]. And this tree hath moche soure juys and somwhat bytynge. And men useth therfore in spryngynge tyme and in haruest to slyt the ryndes and to gader ye humour that comyth oute therof and drynkyth in stede of wyn. And such drynke quencheth thurste. But it fedyth not nother nourryssheth not, nother makyth men dronke." [44] In regard to this paper (probably the first made in England for printing) see Bibliography, p. 204. [45] For dates, full titles, etc., of all the editions of _Banckes's Herbal_ see Bibliography of English Herbals. [46] See p. 44. [47] See Bibliography of English Herbals. [48] Robert Wyer was one of the most famous printers of the early sixteenth century. He came of a Buckinghamshire family and was probably a near relation of John Wyer, also a printer who lived in Fleet Street, for both of them used the device of St. John the Evangelist. He served his apprenticeship to Richard Pynson, whose printing press was in the rentals of Norwich House near the site of the present Villiers Street, and on Pynson's death succeeded to the business. In both his editions of the herbal there is his well-known device of St. John the Evangelist bareheaded and dressed in a flowing robe, sitting under a tree on an island and writing on a scroll spread over his right knee. At his right hand is an eagle with outstretched wings holding an inkwell in its beak, and in the background are the towers and spires of a great city. [49] Ames catalogues two other editions of the herbal by "W. C.," one published by Anthony Kitson and the other by Richard Kele, but no known copies of these exist. [50] Proceedings of the Royal Society of Medicine, 1913. [51] The popular belief in the power of sweet-smelling herbs to ward off infection of the much-dreaded plague rose to its height in Charles II.'s reign, when bunches of rosemary were sold for six and eightpence. Till recently there were at least two survivals of this belief in herbal scents--the doctor's gold-headed cane (formerly a pomander carried at the end of a cane) and the little bouquets carried by the clergy at the distribution of the Maundy Money in Westminster Abbey. [52] For dates of later editions see Bibliography of English Herbals. [53] For fuller bibliographical details of the _Herbarius zu Teutsch_ and the _Ortus Sanitatis_ see Bibliography of Foreign Herbals. [54] Proceedings of the Royal Society of Medicine. [55] The illustrations in the second and later editions of the _Herbarius zu Teutsch_ are very inferior to those in the first, which are beautiful. _The vertuose boke of Distillacyon of the waters of all maner of Herbes_ (1527), translated by Laurence Andrew from the _Liber de arte distillandi_ by Hieronymus Braunschweig, is illustrated with cuts from the same wood-blocks as the _Grete Herball_.