"Addressing myself unto the violets called the blacke or purple violets or March violete of the Garden, which have a great prerogative above others, not only because the minde conceiveth a certaine pleasure and recreation by smelling and handling of these most odoriferous flowers, but also that very many by these violets receive ornament and comely Grace: for there be made of them garlands for the head, nosegaies and posies, which are delightful to look on and pleasant to smell, speaking nothing of the appropriate vertues; yea Gardens themselves receive by these the greatest ornament of all, chiefest beautie and most gallant grace; and the recreation of the Minde which is taken heereby, cannot bee but verie good and honest; for flowers through their beautie, varietie of colour and exquisite formes do bring to a liberall and gentlemanly minde the remembrance of honestie, comeliness and all kindes of vertues. For it would be an unseemly thing, as a certain wise man saith, for him that doth looke upon and handle faire and beautifull things, and who frequenteth and is conversant in faire and beautifull places to have his minde not faire." The bones, so to speak, of Gerard's work are, it is true, taken from Dodoens's splendid Latin herbal, but it is Gerard's own additions which have given the book its hold on our affections. He describes with such simplicity and charm the localities where various plants are to be found, and he gives so much contemporary folk lore that before we have been reading long we feel as though we were wandering about in Elizabethan England with a wholly delightful companion. We know from Gerard's coat of arms that he was descended from a younger branch of the Gerards of Ince, a Lancashire family, but there are no records at the College of Arms to show his parentage. His name is frequently spelt with an e at the end, but Gerard himself and his friends invariably spelt it without. (The spelling "Gerarde" on the title-page of the Herbal is probably an engraver's error.) John Gerard was born at Nantwich in Cheshire in 1545, and educated at the school at Wisterson or Willaston, two miles from his native town. In the Herbal he gives us two glimpses of his boyhood. Under raspberry we find:-- "Raspis groweth not wilde that I know of.... I found it among the bushes of a causey neere unto a village called Wisterson, where I went to schoole, two miles from the Nantwich in Cheshire." Writing of yew[77] he tells us:--