John White and the English Naturalists
D.B. Quinn and P.H. Hulton describe the six voyages to American waters that John White sailed on between 1577 and 1590, and how almost all his surviving drawings are connected with exploration.
The story of natural history in the sixteenth century is not one of spectacular scientific triumphs in interpretation, such as took place in the study of cosmology from Copernicus to Galileo; rather, it is marked by the quiet growth of knowledge. A greater variety of plants appears in the herbals, with fuller descriptions and more accurate accounts of their habitat, and, also, with better illustrations.
Observation is added to the authority of the ancients, and the gardener and the herbalist—and most medicines derived from herbs—were more faithfully served. The same is true of the works on birds and animals and fishes, although here the application of the new knowledge was less direct. One source of new facts was the broadening expanse of overseas territory opened up by the great discoveries, and the plant and animal products that these revealed.
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