further that de l'Obel had forgotten the English language. Mr. B. D. Jackson affirms that when one compares the Herbal with the catalogue of the plants in his garden Gerard seems to have been in the right. On the other hand, de l'Obel in his _Illustrationes_ speaks of Gerard with great bitterness and alleges that the latter pilfered from the _Adversaria_ without acknowledgment. When one turns to the Herbal one forgets the bitterness of these old quarrels and Gerard's possible duplicity in the never-failing charm of the book itself. It is not merely a translation of Dodoens's _Pemptades_, for throughout the volume are inserted Gerard's own observations, numerous allusions to persons and places of antiquarian interest, and a good deal of contemporary folk-lore. No fewer than fifty of Gerard's own friends are mentioned, and one realises as one wanders through the pages of this vast book that he received plants from all the then accessible parts of the globe. Lord Zouche sent him rare seeds from Crete, Spain and Italy. Nicholas Lete, a London merchant, was a generous contributor to Gerard's garden and his name appears frequently. Gerard writes of him: "He is greatly in love with rare and faire flowers, for which he doth carefully send unto Syria, having a servant there at Aleppo, and in many other countries." It was Nicholas Lete who sent Gerard an "orange tawnie gilliflower" from Poland. William Marshall, a chirurgeon on board the _Hercules_, sent him rarities from the Mediterranean. The names which appear most frequently in connection with indigenous plants are those of Thomas Hesketh, a Lancashire gentleman, Stephen Bridwell, "a learned and diligent searcher of simples in the West of England," James Cole, a London merchant, "a lover of plants and very skilful in the knowledge of them," and James Garret, a London apothecary and a tulip enthusiast, who "every season bringeth forth new plants of sundry colours not before seen, all of which to describe particularly were to roll Sisiphus's stone or number the sands." Jean Robin, the keeper of the royal gardens in Paris, sent him many rarities. For instance, of barrenwort (_Epimedium alpinum_) he writes: "This was sent to me from the French King's herbarist Robinus dwellying in Paris at the syne of the blacke heade in the street called Du bout du Monde, in English the end of the world." In view of Sir Walter Raleigh's well-known enthusiasm for collecting rare plants, it is at least possible that he may have been a donor to Gerard's garden. [Illustration: PORTRAIT OF JOHN GERARD FROM THE FIRST EDITION OF THE "HERBALL" (1597)]