JOHN, a surgeon in London, and the greatest botanist of his time, was many years chief gardener to Lord Burleigh; who was himself a great lover of plants, and had the best collection of any nobleman in the kingdom, among which were a great number of exotics introduced by Gerarde. In 1597 he published his Herbal, which was printed at the expense of J. Norton, who procured from Francfort the same blocks in wood as were used in the herbal of Tamerlamentanus. In 1663, Thomas Johnson, an apothecary, published an improved edition of Gerarde's book; which met with such approbation by the university of Oxford, that they conferred on him the degree of doctor of physic. The descriptions in the herbal are plain and familiar; and both these authors have laboured more to make their readers understand the characters of the plants, than to inform them that they themselves understood Greek and Latin. The herbal of Gerarde is now to be considered only as a literary curiosity. The figures in general express very accurately the characters of the plants they are intended to represent.