y is affected
withal. Great thanks therefore be given unto the physicians of our age
and country, who not only endeavour to search out the use of such
simples as our soil doth yield and bring forth, but also to procure
such as grow elsewhere, upon purpose so to acquaint them with our
clime that they in time, through some alteration received from the
nature of the earth, may likewise turn to our benefit and commodity
and be used as our own.

The chief workman (or, as I may call him, the founder of this device)
is Carolus Clusius, the noble herbarist whose industry hath
wonderfully stirred them up into this good act. For albeit that
Matthiolus, Rembert, Lobell, and others have travelled very far in
this behalf, yet none hath come near to Clusius, much less gone
further in the finding and true descriptions of such herbs as of late
are brought to light. I doubt not but, if this man were in England but
one seven years, he would reveal a number of herbs growing with us
whereof neither our physicians nor apothecaries as yet have any
knowledge. And even like thanks be given unto our nobility, gentlemen,
and others, for their continual nutriture and cherishing of such
homeborne and foreign simples in their gardens: for hereby they shall
not only be had at hand and preserved, but also their forms made more
familiar to be discerned and their forces better known than hitherto
they have been.

And even as it fareth with our gardens, so doth it with our orchards,
which were never furnished with so good fruit nor with such variety as
at this present. For, beside that we have most delicate apples, plums,
pears, walnuts, filberts, etc., and those of sundry sorts, planted
within forty years past, in comparison of which most of the old trees
are nothing worth, so have we no less store of strange fruit, as
apricots, almonds, peaches, figs, corn-trees[6] in noblemen's
orchards. I have seen capers, oranges, and lemons, and heard of wild
olives growing here, beside other strange trees, brought from far,
whose names I know not. So that England for these commodities was
never better furnished, neither any nation under their clime more
plentifully endued with these and other blessings from the most high
God, who grant us grace withal to use the same to his honour and
glory! And not as instruments and provocations into further excess and
vanity, wherewith his displeasure may be kindled, lest these his
benefits do turn unto thorns and briers un