During the greater part of three centuries (1300 to 1600), while the revival of learning and science was proceeding actively in Italy, France, Switzerland, and the Rhineland, England lagged behind. Humanist studies were indeed pursued with eminent success in the England of Sir Thomas More, but there was little else for national pride to dwell upon. The re-opening of ancient literature, the outpouring of printed books, the Reformation, the new mathematics and astronomy, the new botany and zoology, were mainly the work of foreigners. Before the seventeenth century no Englishman was recognised as the founder of a scientific school.
Passing over Edward Wotton (1492-1555), who recast the zoology of Aristotle with very little effect upon the progress of biology, we may head the list of English naturalists with the name of William Turner (_d._ 1568), who wrote on the plants and birds of Britain. Turner was a Reformed preacher, who had been the college friend of Ridley and Latimer. Being banished for preaching without licence, he studied medicine and botany in Italy, at Basle and at Cologne. Under Edward VI. he returned to England and was made Dean of Wells, fled again to the Continent on Mary's accession, was re-instated by Elizabeth, was suspended for non-conformity, and died not long after. Turner's herbal (1551-63) cannot be said to have done much for English botany. The arrangement is alphabetical, the properties and virtues of the plants are described out of ancient authors, and most of the figures are borrowed. Still, it was something to have the common plants of England examined by a man who had studied under Luke Ghini, had botanised along the Rhine, and was the pupil, friend, and correspondent of Conrad Gesner, the most learned naturalist in Europe. Turner's _History_ _of Birds_ (_Historia Avium_) was published in Latin at Cologne in 1544,[2] and is therefore earlier than Belon's book of birds. The history contains here and there among passages culled from the ancients a sprightly description of the feeding or nest-building of some English bird, and furnishes evidence of the breeding in our islands of birds which, like the crane, have long been known to us only as rare visitants. Of the kite Turner says that in the cities of England it used to snatch the meat out of the hands of children. In his day the osprey was better known to Englishmen than they liked, for it emptied their fishponds; anglers used to mix their bait with its fat. Turner shows not a little of that spirit of close observation which in a later and more tranquil age shone forth in Gilbert White.