"Thy Hortus Siccus ...
In tomes twice ten, that world immense!
By thee compiled at vast expense."
The broadsides about which H. T. Bobart inquires are of the greatest possible rarity. They were the production of Edmund Gayton, the author of Festivious Notes on Don Quixote, &c. Copies may be seen in the Ashmolean Library, under the press-marks Nos. 423. and 438., but I think not in any other repository of a like nature.
Among the Ashmolean MSS. (No. 36, art. 296.) is a poem of 110 lines "Upon the most hopeful and ever-flourishing Sprouts of Valour, the indefatigable Centrys of the Physick-Garden." This, I apprehend, is a MS. copy of the first broadside mentioned by your correspondent.
I shall merely add, the Bobarts, father and son, were personal friends of Ashmole and Ray, and that, in all probability, among their correspondence much curious and minute information might be obtained.
Edward F. Rimbault.
"ITS."
(Vol. vii., p. 510.)