Carter for the photographs of the authors. Those from medieval German
herbals are reproduced from volumes in the magnificent collection of those
in the Wellcome Library for the History and Public Understanding of Med-
icine. Hans Weiditz was the illustrator of the Brunfels (1530) herbal; Albrecht
Meyer, the Fuchs (1543) herbal; and Emily Margaret Wood, the Green (1902)
flora, whose drawings are reproduced here. We warmly thank Deni Bown for
generously providing the colour photographs. The locating of information
for the map of British and Irish county boundaries prior to the 1974 U.K.
local government reorganisation came at the end of a very long search, for it
turned out that libraries have thoughtlessly disposed of their atlases with
maps of counties as they were before that period. The one that appears here
is based on one produced for A Reader’s Guide to the Place-names of the
United Kingdom,edited by Jeffrey Spittal and John Field (1990), and we are
grateful to the first-named editor and Shaun Tyas of Paul Watkins Publishing
for permission to adapt it for our use.
Finally, Sylvia Reynolds and Roy Vickery placed us still further in their
debt by reading the text in draft and making numerous helpful comments. We
are no less grateful to Elizabeth Platts for also undertaking that major task.
We cannot close without thanking in the warmest terms the staff of Tim-
ber Press for unfailing helpfulness throughout the period of our association.
It has been a great comfort to have a botanist for an editor and to know that
our queries would receive answers from a background of publishing exper-
tise combined with a wide knowledge of the two subjects that come together
in ethnobotany. We also thank our spouses for their understanding and
patience during the very long period the compiling and writing of the book
has occupied our attention—and Clare more particularly for the key part
she has played in the chain of communications.
G.H. would like to take this opportunity to thank D.E.A. publicly for his
generosity in sharing with her what was originally his own project, and for
allowing her to co-author this book, of which the lion’s share of work was his.
14 Preface