GERARDE, JOHN, a famous herbalist of the time of Queen Elizabeth, was born at Nantwich in Cheshire, in the year 1545, and was educated as a surgeon. He removed to London, where he obtained the patronage of Lord Burghley, who was himself a lover of plants, and had the best •collection in his garden of any nobleman in tho kingdom. Gerardo luid the euperintendenco of this fine garden, and retained his employment, as ho tells us himself, for twenty years.
His London residence was in Holborn, where also he had a largo physic-garden of his own, which was probably the first of its kind in England for the number and variety of its productions. It appears that in his younger days he had taken a voyage into the Baltic, since he mentions having seen the wild pines growing about Nerve. He also says of the bay or laurel-tree (' Herbal,' pp. 1177, 1223), " I have not seen any one tree thereof growing in Denmark, Suecia, Poland, Livonia, or Russia, or in any of those wild countries where I have travelled." Among the Lansdowne manuscripts in the British Museum (No. cvii. art. 92) is a letter of Gerarde's own drawing up for Lord Burghley to send to the University of Cambridge, recommending the establish ment of a physic, garden there, to encourage "the facultie of sitnpling," Gerardo himself, whom Lord Burghley calls his servant, to be placed at the head of it : " So that if you Intend a work of such emolument to yourselves and all young students, I shall be glad to have nomi nated and furnished you with so expert an herbalist ; and yourselves, I trust, will think well of the motion and the man." As we read no
more of it, it is probable that the scheme did not take effect.
The earliest publiostlon of Gerardo was the catalogue of his own garden In Holborn : 'Catalogue Acheron", Fruticum, ao I'Isntarum, tam indigonarum quam exoticarum, In bort° Johanuia Gerardi, (Avis et chirurgi Isoudinensia, umeentium; linpensie J. Norton, 1596, Ito; reprinted iu Ito, 1599. The first edition was to Lord Burghley; the second, after that nobleman's death, in very flattering terms, to Sir Walter Raleigh. A oopy of the first editiou (of extreme rarity) is preserved in the library of the British Museum, where it proved of great use to Mr. Alton In preparing his Hortue /i.owenais; by enabling him to ascertain the time when many old plants were first cultivated.
In 1597 came out his 'Herbal, or General History of Plants,' printed by John Norton, in folio. The wood-outs with which it was embel lished were procured from Frankfurt, being the same blocks which had been used for the `Iireuterbuch,' the German herbal of Taber nannontanus, fol., Frankfurt-on-the-Maine, 1583. A second edition of Gentrde's Herbe' was published by Dr. Thomas Johnson, with emendations and corrections, fol., London, 1633 ; and this work con tinued to be one of the boat sources of botanical intelligence, at least to the beginning of tho 1Sth century. Gerardo died about the year 1607.