Philip Stephens and William Browne's 'Catalogus Horti Botanici Oxoniensis' (1658)

In 1658, the Oxford-based academics Philip Stephens (c.1619-1679) and William Browne (1629/30-1678) wrote a second edition of the Catologus, the Catalogus Horti Botanici Oxoniensis. The 1658 Catalogus has a strong academic content, as suggested by the subtitle. The Bobarts, father and son, are given fulsome acknowledgment for their work on the title page and in volume’s preface.

The structure of the book emphasises the academic nature of the work. Front matter includes a preface in Latin, epigraph in Greek, plus compositions in Latin, Greek and English praising the Physic Garden, the Catalogus and the authors. Individual entries in the Catalogus include a description of the kinds of plants and the names of all the plants found in the Garden under that kind, with reference to the published literature.

The main body of the text is a detailed alphabetical list of 1,889 Latin names including English names and partial references to classical botanical works, although the main references are to the English works of John Gerard and John Parkinson 'out of the respect we have for our own country'. There is also an incomplete alphabetical list of English-Latin names. For example, ‘Mandragora mas Mandrake’ from the 1648 catalogue is expanded to become ‘‘Mandragora mas, male Mandrake, P: 344. G: 352’ in the Catalogus. The references are to Parkinson’s Theatrum botanicum (1640) and Gerard’s Herball (1633), there is also the plant’s name in Greek and a reference to the works of the Swiss botanists Johann (1541-1613) and Gaspard (1560-1624) Bauhin.

The printing of the 1658 Catalogus is of a higher standard than in the 1648 edition. The former is by William Hall of Oxford, the latter by Henry Hall of Oxford.