British herbal : an history of plants and trees, natives of Britain, cultivated for use, or raised for beauty

In The British Herbal, Hill described and gave the common use for some fifteen hundred plants of Great Britain and illustrated his text with seventy-five full-page copperplate engravings executed by several different artists. Although John Hill was judged a quack by contemporaries, he made a great and lasting contribution in the area of botanical studies. An apothecary by trade, Hill's initial interest in plants was utilitarian; he collected them for friends and used them to concoct herbal remedies. Hill undertook several large projects in plant classification, among them this work, a valuable taxonomic achievement useful to the scholarly botanist.