PERIOD I. 



professed to be botanists, and every botanist was thought 

 fit to practise medicine. 



Three Germans, who were at once botanists and 

 physicians Brunfels, Bock, and Fuchs led the way 

 by publishing* herbals, in which the plants of Germany 

 were described and figured from nature. Their first 

 editions appeared in the years 1530, 1539, and 1542. 

 Illustrated herbals were then no novelty, but whereas 

 they had hitherto supplied figures which had been 

 copied time after time until they had often ceased to be 

 recognisable, Brunfels set a pattern of better things by 

 producing what he called " herbarum vivae eicones," 

 life-like figures of the plants. Each of the three new 

 herbals contained hundreds of large woodcuts. Those 

 engraved for Fuchs are probably of higher artistic 

 quality than any that have appeared since. Each plant, 

 drawn in clear outline without shading, fills a folio 

 page, upon which the text is not allowed to encroach. 

 The botanist will, however, remark that enlarged 

 figures are hardly ever given, so that minute flowers 

 show as mere dots, and that the details of the foliage 

 are not so scrupulously delineated as in modern figures. 

 The text of Brunfels and Fuchs is of little interest, 

 being largely occupied with traditional pharmacy. 

 Bock, whose figures are inferior to those of Brunfels 

 and Fuchs, makes up for this deficiency by his graphic 

 and sometimes amusing descriptions. He delights in 

 natural contrivances, such as the hooks on the twining 

 stem of the hop, or the elastic membrane which throws 

 out the seeds of wood-sorrel. Brunfels has no intelli- 

 gible sequence of species ; Fuchs abandons the attempt 

 to discover a natural succession, and adopts the alpha- 

 betical order ; Bock aims at bringing together plants 

 which show mutual affinity (" Gewachs einander ver- 



B 



